David J. Bier
Donald Trump has portrayed his immigration policies as good for public safety. He said this month that he had the “safest” immigration policy in history. However, data obtained by the Cato Institute through the Freedom of Information Act challenges this narrative. The newly uncovered information shows that while the Trump administration (2017–2020) was prioritizing prosecutions of migrant parents, separating families, and banning asylum, it also released criminals, including those who went on to commit crimes.
Candidate Trump’s “mass deportation” agenda will make the country less safe in two significant ways. First, it would remove a population that is less likely to commit crimes, ultimately making America’s neighborhoods less safe. For instance, Cato’s research has shown that both legal and illegal immigrants are nearly half as likely to commit crimes for which they are incarcerated in the United States. With unique data from Texas, we have found that immigrants—both legal and illegal—are less likely to commit homicides. Numerous studies have also found that immigration is linked to lower crime rates, homicide rates, and drug-related deaths.
The second problem with mass deportation is just as significant: it would shift focus away from the removal of immigrants who do commit crimes. Noncitizens who commit serious crimes should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and deported. Whatever amount the government spends on immigration enforcement, it should spend on detaining and removing this small minority of individuals. Donald Trump claims that he did that, but the facts tell a different story regarding his record on migrant criminals:
On his fourth day in office, Trump signed an executive order rescinding Obama-era policies that prioritized the detention and removal of serious public safety threats;
Within a few months, his administration was secretly separating families, using prosecutorial resources to jail migrant parents and focusing resources on visa overstays, not serious criminals;
During the height of family separation, Trump deprioritized prosecuting migrants with criminal histories to instead spend resources on separating families;
While Trump poured resources into detaining asylum seekers, he also released nearly 58,184 noncitizens with criminal records, including 8,620 violent criminals and 306 murderers;
ICE ended up (re)arresting nearly 11,000 noncitizens who entered under Trump and were convicted of non-immigration crimes, including rape and murder; and
Trump’s policies incentivized migrant criminals to enter, triggering a threefold increase in the number of convicted criminals attempting to cross the border illegally.
Trump Deprioritized Serious Criminals to Target Asylum Seekers
On January 24, 2017, just days after becoming president, Trump signed an executive order that rescinded an Obama-era Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memorandum that explicitly prioritized the arrest and removal of recent border crossers and serious criminals, focusing first on felons and then on serious misdemeanors that were not immigration-related. Trump wrote in the order that it would be wrong to “exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement” and that, “I hereby direct agencies to employ all lawful means to ensure the faithful execution of the immigration laws of the United States against all removable aliens.”
The Trump administration’s subsequent DHS memo was even more explicit in eliminating any requirement for agents to focus on criminals. Although it purports to maintain some “priorities,” DHS cannot target everyone while still “prioritizing” criminals. The Obama-era DHS recognized this fact, but President Trump did not care. He wanted mass deportation, rather than targeted deportation. The Atlantic reported: “Hundreds of agents have been temporarily reassigned to low-level enforcement tasks, such as checking businesses for undocumented workers or locating foreigners who overstayed their visas.”
When it comes to border enforcement, Trump was most infuriated by asylum seekers rather than criminals. Within weeks of taking office, his administration started planning to separate families and spend enforcement resources on jailing migrant parents. According to FOIA data, the share of prosecuted individuals with prior convictions fell 63 percent from March 2018 to May 2018 as family separations increased. According to the DOJ Inspector General, “sex offenders were released” back into Mexico to make room for the prosecution of migrant parents.
The Justice Department said:
There have been recent “anecdotal” accounts from the field, that [the Border Patrol] is missing actual worthy felony defendants, including sex offenders. These “missed” defendants typically get [returned] to Mexico and then try again. Issue will be if one gets across, lives in the US and commits a crime; all because of this initiative and [the Border Patrol] not being able to properly process and identify serious/dangerous criminal aliens.
Trump’s Policies Caused a Surge of Illegal Entries by Criminals
Trump’s policies, which deprioritized efforts to address criminal activity and focused on banning asylum, ultimately led to far more attempted illegal crossings by individuals with criminal convictions. In late 2020, the number of criminals attempting to illegally enter the United States exploded to record highs. The all-time record day for arrests of individuals with criminal convictions occurred on December 7, 2020.
Unfortunately, we can’t provide a detailed breakdown of who all these individuals were because, under Title 42, the Border Patrol under Trump stopped recording detailed information about their criminal histories. To this day, Customs and Border Protection still does not report the arrests of criminals who were expelled under Title 42. We only know the aggregate numbers under Title 42 obtained through Cato FOIA requests.
Trump’s actions not only led to a threefold increase in criminal crossings from his first month to his last month in office, but they also reversed a decade of near-continuous progress in deterring criminals from attempting to enter the United States illegally.
To be clear, Figure 1 and Figure 2 illustrate the number of criminals apprehended by Border Patrol. However, more criminals were crossing during the Trump administration because they felt that they would face few consequences when they were caught and so would eventually get in. As a result, Trump oversaw a doubling in the number of known gotaways—successful evasions—at the border from December 2016 to December 2020. After Trump left office, “gotaways” continued to rise during the period when the Biden administration maintained the Title 42 asylum ban. Gotaways have fallen 80 percent, starting immediately after Trump’s Title 42 policy was rescinded.
Title 42 removed consequences for convicted criminals who crossed the border illegally, enabling them to try again and again. GOP states used the courts to force the Biden administration to maintain Title 42, while simultaneously blaming him for the rise in gotaways.
Trump Released Serious Criminals to Detain and Deport Asylum Seekers
Not only were more criminals entering the country, but Trump was releasing many of them into the United States while filling detention facilities with asylum seekers. In 2019, Trump’s ICE released more than twice the number of individuals convicted of crimes compared to any year during Biden’s presidency. Since Biden prioritized the removal of criminals, his administration has released a lower percentage of criminals than Trump did. Figure 4 shows annual releases, and Figure 5 shows monthly releases. From December 2020 to June 2024, ICE reduced releases of convicted criminals by 54 percent.
The data for Figures 4 and 5 are publicly available, as I have previously reported. However, Table 1 uses nonpublic FOIA data, providing more clarity about exactly who Trump was releasing, categorized by type of crime. The overall numbers in Table 1 are slightly different from those in Figure 4 because the FOIA data do not account for the final disposition of those still detained at the end of the year. Nonetheless, the information is revealing. From January 21, 2017, through February 2020, Trump released at least 58,184 individuals who had been convicted of crimes, including 8,620 violent convicted criminals.
Trump Released Noncitizen Criminals Who Committed Crimes
The FOIA records also indicate many cases where individuals originally entered the United States during the Trump administration, were convicted of crimes, and subsequently arrested or re-arrested by ICE. Obviously, these data would exclude many people who are still serving their sentences for crimes committed during the Trump years. Overall, ICE records reveal that 10,738 noncitizens who entered after Trump took office were arrested and then convicted of crimes (excluding immigration-related offenses and smuggling).
We cannot determine whether all of these convictions were from people previously released from ICE custody or if they evaded detection at the border. Even if they evaded detection at the border, it is clear that Trump’s policies are at least partly responsible, as explained above. We know that at least some individuals released by Trump did go on to commit crimes, while others evaded detection at the border before committing crimes.
ICE may release convicted criminals for many different reasons, including lack of detention space, inability to deport them (because the person lacks identification, their country lacks diplomatic relations with the United States, or it refuses to accept deportations). They may also be released when the crime was not serious and the person proved their eligibility for legal status. During the pandemic, the ICE officers’ union prioritized the safety of officers from COVID-19 above all else, ultimately releasing many criminals into the United States to avoid having to come into direct contact with them.
However, a big pre-pandemic reason for the releases under the Trump administration was that it was determined to detain as many asylum seekers as possible, prioritizing their detention and removal over that of convicted criminals. For instance, in 2019 ICE was using 68 percent of its detention space for individuals without any criminal convictions.
Trump emphasized that he did not prioritize the removal of criminals above other immigrants from the United States. The share of individuals with criminal convictions who were removed from the interior of the United States fell from 92 percent in 2015 and 2016 to 75–77 percent from 2018 to 2020. Although the absolute number of removals also declined, this number is influenced by several factors, including congressional appropriations, migration to the border, and state and local cooperation, the number of crimes committed by noncitizens, among others.
Conclusion
Donald Trump is not responsible for crimes committed by immigrants any more than President Biden is. Only the criminal is responsible for his actions and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. However, Trump is mistaken in claiming that his policies were good for public safety. Immigration enforcement should prioritize serious threats to Americans, rather than indiscriminate mass deportation. Peaceful immigrants are good for American communities, reducing crime rates and making the country safer and wealthier. Mass deportation and closing the borders to new legal immigration would ultimately make Americans less safe.
This post is not about the Biden administration’s legacy on immigration but rather about Trump’s misrepresentation of his record. Nonetheless, it is true that the Biden administration is releasing fewer criminals, including serious offenders, than the Trump administration did. Currently, ICE is arresting more convicted criminals than it was when President Biden came into office. In 2024, it has averaged 5,571 removals per month of convicted criminals versus 4,080 in December 2020. It has brought into custody, on average, 5,719 convicted criminals per month, compared to 4,850 in December 2020.
Trump should be asked whether he is serious about deprioritizing criminal removals and shifting back toward a mass deportation stance. This doesn’t mean that the Biden administration has solved all immigration problems; it has also allocated too much time and resources towards deterring peaceful immigration rather than channeling it into lawful, orderly, and vetted channels. The best thing policymakers can do for border security is to expand legal immigration, allowing Border Patrol and ICE to focus almost exclusively on serious criminals.
