Snopes has fact-checked President Donald Trump's claim on Friday (June 22), that “Sixty-three thousand Americans since 9/11 have been killed by illegal aliens." He made the statements at the White House where he was hosting families who lost loved ones to crime carried out by illegal immigrants.
Against the backdrop of the furore over Trump's child separation policy, he said that he was hosting American citizens who had suffered "permanent separation" through undocumented immigrants.
Chicago Tribune noted that this was a similar tactic to one he had used soon after his nomination.
Back then, Trump had also stood alongside those who had lost family to immigrants who were illegally in the country. He had done this to highlight the fact that he would bring tougher immigration policies to the country.
Snopes is not disputing there have been homicides by undocumented immigrants
There is no disputing that some people have died at the hands of illegal migrants. Kathryn Steinle is one person that comes to mind. She was shot and killed by Garcia Zarate, an immigrant who had been deported five times. He was found not guilty of murder in a controversial hearing and jury decision in San Francisco, NBC News reported.
Snopes was not disputing that Americans had been killed, but was fact-checking the numbers that Donald Trump quoted.
According to them, he had quoted unverified figures that originated in 2006 via "Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa." King had also thrown out some questionable numbers in 2009. Back then he said that, that 25,064 undocumented immigrants had been arrested for homicides between 2004 and 2008."
The figures were misquoted by King, as Snopes pointed out the figures actually referred to data from the Government Accountability Office.
The figures were referring to those dating through from to 1955, "a difference of nearly 51 years," which is a huge difference.
Faulty immigrant crime statistics
Because of the faulty calculations, it would not have been anywhere near as high as King had claimed. But Chicago Tribune noted that Donald Trump may have settled on the figure of 63,000 following information he was given in March.
At a round-table event, a woman named Mary Ann Mendoza came out with the statistic. They cite her as saying, "Over 63,000 Americans have been killed since 9/11 by illegal aliens...It's a crime spree that is being left unchecked, and these sanctuary city officials - state and city officials - they're putting American lives into harm every single day."
Donald Trump seemed to be surprised by the numbers, which related back to King's claims. He did query the validity, Chicago Tribune noted, as he asked her, "Is that a known figure? Is that an acknowledged—." He had apparently not heard of that number before. Mendoza informed him it works out to "12 lives taken every day." This refers to the erroneous statement King made in 2005 on his website, which said,"The lives of 12 U.S.
citizens would be saved who otherwise die a violent death at the hands of murderous illegal aliens each day.
Snopes looked at the figures very carefully and arrived at different numbers. According to their data, it actually works out that "If we multiply that figure by 18... (11 September 2001 to 22 June 2018)," they get a "final figure of about 8,218 arrests," whereas the "faulty metric yields a total of around 112,790 homicide arrests in the same timeframe." They did note that they had not differentiated between arrests and convictions and had not factored in any leap days.
