Trump’s Four Pinocchios Score on his crime figures

On June 22, President Trump fabricated numbers to assert that illegal immigrants are dangerous criminals. The Washington Post awarded him the maximum four Pinocchios.

He assigned to illegal aliens (about 11 million) crime numbers which he took from an accounting of all aliens, which includes legal and not naturalized aliens of about 13 million.

He used figures collected over very many years but attributed them to seven (2011 – 2018).

He used the percentage of persons in federal prison who are aliens (legal and illegal) to proportion state and local crimes to illegal aliens. A relatively high federal prison count of aliens is heavily weighted by immigration and drug crimes. Trump used this federal prison inmate ratio to estimate murders (a state crime for the most part) committed committed by illegal aliens.

In fact, the crime rates among both legal and illegal immigrants are below those of citizens. And, the percentage of inmates in state and local prisons who are aliens is well below the percentage of persons in the United States who are aliens.

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