CBS News
Trump’s “border czar” claims more than 1.5 million noncitizens in the U.S. have criminal convictions. Here’s a fact check.
President-elect Donald Trump’s appointed “border czar” Tom Homan has said that he wants to prioritize deporting noncitizens with criminal histories when Trump’s second term starts in January.
This follows recent high-profile criminal cases involving undocumented immigrants, including the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley by a Venezuelan immigrant who crossed the U.S. southern border illegally.
But in interviews, Homan and other top Republicans have shared contradictory and inflated figures about the overall number of noncitizens who Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say fall into this category.
In a recent interview with Fox News, Homan said there are “over 1.5 million convicted criminal aliens in this country with orders for removal who we’ll be looking for.” The Trump transition team has said this number includes some migrants who have crossed into the country illegally, although they are not considered “convicted criminal aliens.”
John Moore / Getty Images
House Speaker Mike Johnson has claimed in recent weeks that the number of migrants apprehended for committing violent crimes specifically is “by some counts, as many as 3 or 4 million people.”
However, Immigration and Customs Enforcement provided much lower estimates to Congress.
As of July 21, ICE’s national docket, which tracks immigrants facing deportation proceedings, listed roughly 660,000 noncitizens with criminal histories, including 436,000 convicted criminals and 227,000 with pending criminal charges.
This includes noncitizens in ICE detention and those not detained by the agency.
There are only estimates of the number of noncitizens currently in the U.S. As of 2022, there were roughly 24.5 million noncitizens — including at least 11 million unauthorized immigrants and 13.5 million people who are lawful permanent residents or temporary lawful residents, according to estimates by Pew Research Center based on the latest Census data.
By Homan’s numbers, around 6% of noncitizens would be convicted criminals. By Johnson’s numbers closer to 12% of the noncitizens would be criminals, or as much as 24% of the unauthorized population.
According to ICE’s figures closer to 2.6% of the noncitizens in the U.S. have criminal histories.
Response from Trump’s transition spokesman
The agency’s totals are far below the millions suggested by Homan and Johnson, and ICE’s figures remain the most accurate available for tracking noncitizens with criminal histories, according to C. Mario Russell, executive director for the Center for Migration Studies, a think tank that also supports policies that safeguard migrant rights.
Johnson’s office did not respond to a request for clarification at time of publication.
Brian Hughes, a Trump-Vance transition spokesman, told CBS News that Homan was considering the number of migrants who have crossed illegally into the U.S. who evaded border patrol, sometimes called “gotaways” by immigration and border security officials.
“Tom Homan is right–nearly 2 million ‘gotaways’ have evaded border patrol under the Biden-Harris wide-open border, which is more than four times the average under President Trump,” Hughes said.
Border Patrol estimates that roughly 1.7 million migrants have evaded apprehension since the start of fiscal year 2021. However, there is no official data on the number of so-called “gotaways” with criminal records.
There were also “gotaways” during the Trump administration but the average number during Trump’s first three years in office, before immigration fell during COVID-19, was four times lower than the totals in fiscal year 2022 and 2023, according to testimony by Steven A. Camarota, the director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies.
In some interviews, Homan has also cited lower figures more in line with ICE data. On Nov. 14, for example, Homan told NewsNation, “authorities have identified more than 700,000 undocumented immigrants with criminal convictions.”
What ICE’s data shows about the number of noncitizens with criminal histories
Noncitizens — including those with green cards — can lose their legal right to be in the U.S. after committing a crime. Many of the people ICE tracks remain incarcerated and can be deported only after serving their sentences.
Data suggests many of the 436,000 convicted criminals on this list, including over 13,000 convicted of murder and 62,000 people convicted of assault, have been in the U.S. for years. Non-violent offenders are also on ICE’s docket, including more than 125,000 people convicted of or facing traffic offenses.
In 2016, under the Obama administration, there were 368,574 convicted criminals in ICE’s non-detained docket, according to data published by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General. In June 2021, a few months into the Biden administration, there were 405,786 convicted criminals on the list.
Some criminal noncitizens remain in the U.S. for years because they come from countries that don’t accept or limit U.S. deportations, including Cuba, Venezuela, and China. Others are legally protected from deportation under United Nations convention because they face a credible threat of torture if they return to their home countries.
Government statistics indicate that a relatively small fraction of migrants processed by Border Patrol have criminal records in the U.S. or in other countries that share information with American officials.
Additionally, although the data is not exhaustive, available studies suggest that undocumented migrants are incarcerated less frequently than native-born Americans.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will meet with President-elect Donald Trump Friday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Canada’s CBC News reported. The meeting comes in the wake of Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on goods coming from Canada.
Trudeau will dine with Trump at Mar-a-largo Friday night, according to senior sources who spoke to CBC News on condition they not be named due to the sensitivity of the trip. The sources said the meeting was pushed for by Canadian officials, the Canadian broadcaster said.
Trudeau’s plane landed at Palm Beach International Airport at about 5:30 p.m. local time.
The meeting comes after Trudeau earlier Friday cautioned that if Trump follows through on this threat to impose sweeping tariffs on Canadian products, he would be raising prices for Americans and hurting American businesses.
Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico if the countries don’t stop what he called the flow of drugs and migrants across southern and northern borders. He said he would impose a 25% tax on all products entering the U.S. from Canada and Mexico as one of his first executive orders.
“It is important to understand that Donald Trump, when he makes statements like that, he plans on carrying them out. There’s no question about it,” Trudeau said to reporters in Prince Edward Island in Atlantic Canada.
“Our responsibility is to point out that he would not just be harming Canadians, who work so well with the United States, but he would actually be raising prices for American citizens as well and hurting American industry and business,” he added.
Trudeau said Trump got elected because he promised to bring down the cost of groceries but now he’s talking about adding 25% to the cost of all kinds of products, including potatoes from Prince Edward Island.
Those tariffs could essentially blow up the North American trade pact that Trump’s team negotiated during his first term. Trudeau noted they were able to successfully re-negotiate the deal, which he calls a “win-win” for both countries.
“We can work together as we did previously,” Trudeau said.
Trump made the tariff threat Monday while railing against an influx of illegal migrants, even though the numbers at the Canadian border pale in comparison to the southern border.
The U.S. Border Patrol made 56,530 arrests at the Mexican border in October alone — and 23,721 arrests at the Canadian one between October 2023 and September 2024.
Trump also railed about fentanyl from Mexico and Canada, even though seizures from the Canadian border are few in comparison to the Mexican border. U.S. customs agents seized 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border last fiscal year, compared with 21,100 pounds at the Mexican border.
Canadian officials say lumping Canada in with Mexico is unfair but they are ready to make new investments in border security.
“We’re going to work together to meet some of the concerns,” Trudeau said. “But ultimately it is through lots of real constructive conversations with President Trump that I am going to have, that will keep us moving forward on the right track for all Canadians.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday she is confident that a tariff war with the United States will be averted. Trump posted on social media that he had spoken with her and she had agreed to stop unauthorized migration across the border into the United States.
When Trump imposed higher tariffs during his first term in office, other countries responded with retaliatory tariffs of their own. Canada, for instance, announced billions of new duties in 2018 against the U.S. in a tit-for-tat response to new taxes on Canadian steel and aluminum.
Canada is the top export destination for 36 U.S. states. Nearly $2.7 billion worth of goods and services cross the border each day.
Canada is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminum and uranium to the U.S. and has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon is eager for and investing in for national security.
Chef, restaurateur and TV cooking judge Tom Colicchio offers “Sunday Morning” viewers a recipe from his latest book, “Why I Cook,” what he calls Possibly the Best Grilled Cheese You’ll Ever Have. He writes:
“Like many other dads, I make a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches for the kids. This one started as a way to utilize the mozzarella from Lombardi’s Love Lane Market, an Italian deli in Mattituck that makes the world’s best fresh mozz. Paired with ‘nduja, a peppery spreadable Italian sausage, the grilled cheese essentially becomes a spicy pizza. It’s decadent for sure, but the spice of the ‘nduja cuts through the richness of the mozzarella. As always, but here especially, low and slow heat is important. It’s the key to developing a nice crust on the bread, while also melting the cheese.”
From “Why I Cook” by Tom Colicchio, courtesy of Artisan
Possibly the Best Grilled Cheese You’ll Ever Have
By Tom Colicchio
Makes 2 sandwiches
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
½ pound fresh mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced
4 thick slices peasant bread (see Note)
3 ounces soft ‘nduja
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
Instructions:
Pour 1 tablespoon of the olive oil into a heavy-bottomed skillet and set over medium-low heat.
Layer the mozzarella slices on 2 pieces of the bread. Layer the ‘nduja on the other 2 slices of bread.
Add 1 slice of mozzarella bread and 1 slice of ‘nduja bread open face to the pan. Add 2 tablespoons butter to the pan. Cook for 2 minutes. Cover the pan and cook (still open face) for another 2 to 3 minutes, until the cheese is melted. Remove the hot melted slices from the pan and immediately flip them together to make a sandwich. Slice the sandwich in half crosswise.
Wipe the pan clean and repeat the process to make the second sandwich and serve immediately.
Note:
Any bread will do, but I prefer one without a heavy sourdough flavor.
From “Why I Cook” by Tom Colicchio. Copyright © 2024 by Tom Colicchio. Reprinted by permission of Artisan, an imprint of Hachette Book Group. All rights reserved.
See also:
For more info:
Chef, restaurateur and TV cooking judge Tom Colicchio offers “Sunday Morning” viewers a recipe from his latest book, “Why I Cook,” for Skirt Steak with Shishitos, Hot Cherry Peppers, and Onions. He writes:
“This recipe started as a salad for our babysitter Tenzin, who is a vegetarian. I, clearly, am not. But the flavors of that salad — sweetness, acid, spice, saltiness, and umami — work so well together I knew they would go perfectly with steak. For the record, this combo of hot cherry peppers, shishitos, and red onions, which touches every flavor receptor, works just as well with grilled pork, chicken, or fish. Sometimes I’ll add raw cucumbers at the end; sometimes I’ll cut the onions into rings and grill them. And if you have leftover steak, just slice it, toss it briefly on the grill, and use.”
From “Why I Cook” by Tom Colicchio, courtesy of Artisan
Skirt Steak with Shishitos, Hot Cherry Peppers, and Onions
By Tom Colicchio
Serves 4
Ingredients:
1¼ pounds skirt steak
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 red onions, cut into 1-inch wedges
Kosher salt
½ pound shishito peppers
Freshly cracked black pepper
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon chili crisp
¼ cup sliced pickled hot cherry peppers
½ cup fresh cilantro leaves
½ cup fresh mint leaves
½ cup fresh parsley leaves
½ cup fresh basil leaves
2 or 3 scallions, sliced
Juice of 1 lime
Instructions:
Allow the steak to come to room temperature.
Warm a large heavy-bottomed sauté pan over medium heat. Add enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan, about 2 tablespoons. Place the onions in the pan, season with salt, and cook until browned and soft, 6 to 7 minutes. Transfer the onions from the pan to a large bowl.
To the same pan, add 1 tablespoon oil and the shishito peppers. Season with salt and cook, turning occasionally, until the shishitos are charred and blistered, 6 to 8 minutes.
Transfer the shishitos to the bowl with the onions. Toss the onions and peppers with 1 tablespoon olive oil and salt and black pepper to taste. Add the fish sauce, chili crisp, and pickled peppers. Taste and adjust the amount of chili crisp and pickled peppers based on how much spice you like. Add the fresh cilantro, mint, parsley, and basil and mix.
Dry the skirt steak with paper towels and cut crosswise into pieces that will fit in the same heavy-bottomed sauté pan. Generously season the steak with salt and black pepper.
Heat the pan over medium-high heat. Pour in enough oil to coat the bottom, about 2 tablespoons. When the oil shimmers, add the steak to the pan (in batches, if needed, so as not to overcrowd the pan) and sear for 2 to 3 minutes per side for medium-rare.
Transfer the steak to a cutting board and allow to rest for 5 minutes before slicing against the grain and tossing with the onion/shishito/herb mixture. Spoon any accumulated juices over the steak, top with the scallions and lime juice, and enjoy.
From “Why I Cook” by Tom Colicchio. Copyright © 2024 by Tom Colicchio. Reprinted by permission of Artisan, an imprint of Hachette Book Group. All rights reserved.
See also:
For more info:
