In June, illegal alien Victor Martinez-Hernandez was charged with the murder of Rachel Morin, a mother of five in Maryland. Police in Oklahoma tracked the accused repeat offender down with a sample of his DNA recovered from a Los Angeles home invasion in which a 9-year-old girl and her mother were assaulted.

Police say Martinez-Hernandez came to the U.S. illegally to escape prosecution for at least one other murder in his native El Salvador in December 2022. 

“That should never have been allowed to happen,” said Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler, referring to the numerous missed red flags the case presented. His office apprehended Hernandez in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Like the member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua sentenced to life in prison last week for the murder of nursing student Laken Riley in Georgia, Hernandez’s case is shining a light on the federal government’s failure to properly vet and keep track of lawless migrants.

These gaps have led to broad claims that illegal immigrants have less involvement with the criminal justice system than native-born Americans. A review of the available data, however, shows that the criminal records of millions of migrants—the ones President-elect Donald Trump vows to prioritize for deportation—remain unknown due to illegal crossings, lax enforcement, and lax data collection by federal and “sanctuary” jurisdictions. 

In addition, an analysis of the available statistics by RealClearInvestigations suggests that the crime rate involving noncitizens is vastly understated. A separate RCI analysis based on estimates developed by the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice suggests that crime by illegal aliens who entered the U.S. by July 21 cost the country some $166.5 billion.

These criminals disproportionately entered the U.S. during the Biden-Harris administration.

The problem begins with incomplete initial vetting by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The criminal histories of migrants from far-flung countries with often shoddy record-keeping are somewhat hard to determine. It is also impractical to hold each person until he or she has passed a rigorous background check.

As a result, ICE routinely releases many illegal immigrants into the country on their own recognizance and then discovers afterward that many had criminal records in their home countries. 

In response to a request from Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, ICE reported this summer that it has released  7.4 million such “nondetained” noncitizens into the U.S. during the past four decades. ICE reports that these include 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories—435,719 individuals with criminal convictions in their home countries and another 226,847 with pending criminal charges.

These precise figures, however, do not say whether the crimes of the latter group were committed in the accused’s home country or the U.S. 

In a July 21 letter to Gonzales, ICE reported that 13,099 of these nondetained individuals have convictions for homicide, with 1,845 facing criminal homicide charges. Another 9,461 have convictions for sex offenses (not including assault or commercialized sex), and 2,659 face pending charges. The convictions include other crimes such as assault (62,231), robbery (10,031), sexual assault (15,811), weapons offenses (13,423), and dangerous drugs (56,533). 

These figures only suggest the extent of criminality because they only list the most serious crime committed by each individual. A murderer, for example, who also committed a sex offense is counted only as a murderer.

A listing doesn’t include the fact that millions of migrants are violating the law because of their presence in the U.S. It also doesn’t account for the lawbreaking involved in working without proper authorization or the widespread use of stolen Social Security numbers to secure employment. 

The 662,566 convicted and likely criminals make up 9% of the 7.4 million released noncitizens in the last four decades. 

The statistics miss much of the relationship between crime and illegal aliens. Noncitizens in the “national docket data” either surrendered to Border Patrol agents or were apprehended at the border. Those who avoid surrender likely have reasons to evade authorities, such as a criminal background. 

But there are others who avoided being caught and won’t be in these numbers. That group includes “gotaways”—individuals observed crossing the U.S. border illegally but not apprehended or turned back. With up to 38% of border agents shifted from monitoring to processing duties and 30% of surveillance cameras not functioning, millions more likely entered the U.S. undetected, potentially including the most dangerous individuals.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CPB, estimates that some 2 million such “gotaways” have entered the country since 2021.

The data on migrants who have been processed also understates the problem. Criminals rarely commit just one crime.

For example, from 1990 to 2002, in the 75 most populous U.S. counties, 70% of those convicted of a violent felony had a prior arrest and 56% had a prior criminal conviction. In 2023 in Washington, D.C., the average homicide suspect had been arrested 11 times before committing a homicide.

Data for 30 states shows that 60.1% of criminals released from prison in 2005 had been arrested again within two years, and 73.5% had been arrested within four years.

The ICE data set provides a single entry for each individual.

Most violent crimes don’t result in an arrest, so looking at arrests or convictions in other countries will underestimate whether illegal aliens are criminals. Across all U.S. cities in 2022, only 35.2% of violent crimes resulted in an arrest. While 50.6% of murders resulted in an arrest, just 24.1% of rapes produced an arrest, 22.7% of robberies, and 39.9% of aggravated assaults. 

As the Laken Riley and Rachel Morin murder cases make clear, it is difficult to calculate all the victimization costs of crime to families and society.

Using tools developed by the National Institute of Justice, RealClearInvestigations estimated the likely bare-minimum economic costs of crimes committed by illegal aliens. It arrived at an estimated cost to victims in dollar terms by assuming that each of the 662,566 “nondetained” noncitizen offenders on ICE’s list committed just once in the U.S. the crime for which he had been previously accused.

ICE presented Gonzales with numbers on 42 different types of crime, but the National Institute of Justice calculated the cost to victims for only eight types of crime.

Professor Mark Cohen at Vanderbilt University, who co-authored the original National Institute of Justice report, updated the list with 15 of the crime categories reported by ICE: murder, sexual assault, sexual offenses, robbery, assault, arson, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, weapon offenses, drugs, fraud, liquor offenses, gambling, and stolen property. Cohen’s updated numbers also provide estimates for the damage from child abuse, drunk driving, and vandalism, but ICE didn’t collect numbers on those crimes.

The National Institute of Justice’s estimated losses from crime victimization include medical care/ambulances, mental health care, police/fire service costs, social/victim services, property loss/damage, reduced productivity (at work, home, and school), and nonmonetary losses (fear, pain, suffering, and lost quality of life). 

Murders account for almost $153.8 billion of the $166.5 billion in estimated criminal victimization costs (a breakdown of the costs of crime for each type of crime is available here). Another $6 billion involves sexual assaults/offenses, and an additional $5.2 billion comes from sexual assaults and sexual offenses.

Half of the crimes these nondetained individuals commit don’t have cost estimates. These crimes include kidnapping, embezzlement, extortion, smuggling, traffic offenses, and weapon offenses.

These criminal illegal aliens entered the U.S. under multiple presidential administrations, but the size of the problem was likely larger under the Biden-Harris administration. That isn’t just because so many more illegal aliens were entering the country. Under the first Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services performed background checks on immigrants. That included contacting their countries of origin. 

ICE agents can’t access the same databases to check on migrants, and the agents don’t contact their home countries. Plus, the massive inflow of illegal immigrants has overwhelmed the system. ICE’s deputy director blames the “enormous workload” agents face, preventing them from doing even limited background checks. There are so many coming in that the government can’t house these immigrants until their backgrounds are properly checked.

ICE has been processing criminals as they enter the country, but without identifying them as criminals. So, under the Biden-Harris administration, they have simply been released into the country. Now, they are walking freely in the United States, and no one knows where they are.

As bad as these numbers are, the reality may be even worse. The Biden-Harris administration is accused of presenting the border crisis so that it does not look as bad as it is. In mid-September, retired San Diego Border Patrol Chief Aaron Heitke testified how the Biden-Harris administration ordered him not to publicize the arrests of illegal border crossers identified as having terrorist ties.

The American Immigration Council, which strongly opposes Trump’s deportation policies, estimates that it could cost $88 billion to deport 1 million illegal immigrants. But if we accept this estimate and ignore the various government benefits that these individuals might be receiving, ICE’s number of 662,556 illegal criminal immigrants implies a cost of $58.3 billion to remove them—just over one-third of the conservative estimate given here of the cost of the crimes by these criminals.

The estimate of over $160 billion in costs from criminal illegal aliens is quite likely an underestimate. It assumes the average criminal coming into the country commits only one offense similar to what he committed in his home country. We also aren’t counting the costs of half of criminal illegal aliens.

John R. Lott Jr., an economist, is a political commentator and gun rights advocate who founded the nonprofit Crime Prevention Research Center.

Reprinted with Permission from The Daily Signal – By John R Lott Jr.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.