White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was pressed by Fox News' senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy on the news that tens of thousands of illegal immigrants in the U.S. have serious criminal records.
Jean-Pierre responded to the line of questioning about the Border Patrol numbers by claiming it was a "false representation of the data."
Doocy said, "13,000 people who have been convicted of murder across the border illegally and are living among us. So how much danger are U.S. communities in right now?"
"I think it's important to correct the record here," she responded. "It's been fact-checked by some of your colleagues here, by multiple outlets. That has been debunked on what has been falsely misrepresented, misrepresented here. So we have to call that out."
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Doocy responded, "Can you clarify what the misrepresentation is?"
Jean-Pierre responded, "If we're going to report something, data that's out there, we got to do it in a way that is not confusing the American people and certainly not lying."
"If you look at the total returns and removal of the past year, that has been higher than every year under the previous administration since 2010," she said, reiterating claims the story has been fact-checked and falsely represented.
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New data released to Republican lawmakers showed the number of noncitizens who have final orders of removal or are going through removal proceedings but are not in ICE custody.
Out of 7.4 million people on that docket, 425,431 are convicted criminals and 222,141 have pending criminal charges.
In the latest data, the criminal records included 62,231 convicted of assault, 14,301 convicted of burglary, 56,533 with drug convictions and 13,099 convicted of homicide. An additional 2,521 have kidnapping convictions, and 15,811 have sexual assault convictions. There are an additional 1,845 with pending homicide charges, 42,915 with assault charges, 3,266 with burglary charges and 4,250 with assault charges.
The Department of Homeland Security released a statement pushing back on the figures, stating, "[The data] includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more... It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners."
