President Trump is accusing Vice President Harris of allowing “American sons and daughters to be raped and murdered” after newly released data showed that more than 13,000 illegal immigrants convicted of homicide and nearly 16,000 found guilty of rape are are roaming around the country. 

“I knew it before, but these numbers are actually worse than I ever thought,” Trump said during a Michigan rally on Friday. “They should have been released far earlier so that we could have done something about it.” 

The figures came from a report sent to a Texas congressman, Tony Gonzalez, by the deputy director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Patrick Lechleitner, in response to a request Mr. Gonzalez submitted back in March. The letter, which Mr. Gonzalez posted to X on Friday, included detailed information on the criminal status of illegal immigrants both in and outside of ICE custody. 

“As of July 21, 2024, there were 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories on ICE’s national docket — 13,099 criminally convicted MURDERS,” Mr. Gonzalez wrote. “Americans deserve to be SAFE in our own communities.” 

Trump, who has long lambasted the so-called “border tsar” vice president for allowing the migrant crisis to worsen under her reign, used the report as evidence of Ms. Harris’s failure. “She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing,” he said on Friday, adding, “She should resign in disgrace for what she’s done to our country, not run for president.”

Currently, there are an estimated 7 million illegal immigrants that are living in the country outside of ICE detention who are placed in what immigration officials call the “non-detained docket.” Those migrants are allowed to remain in the country — and presumably are subject to monitoring by the ICE — while officials review their cases. 

Of the migrants not currently in detention, more than 425,000 have been convicted of crimes and some 222,000 await criminal charges. 

The report does not offer details on how many of the criminal migrants entered during the Biden-Harris administration. However, Mr. Biden has faced criticism over the course of his presidency for allowing the non-detained docket to grow considerably while immigration officials have struggled to get through the massively backlogged caseload. The non-detained docket has grown from 3.7 million in 2021 to 4.8 million in 2022 to more than 7 million in 2023. 

ICE’s struggle to handle the influx of migrant crossings while facing funding shortages was underscored by Mr. Lechleitner in his letter, with the ICE director even going so far as to call the immigration system “broken.” Yet, he assured that the Department of Homeland Security remained committed to “enforce the law to secure our borders.” 

“We are removing and returning record numbers of migrants who are unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the United States, and prioritizing for removal those who present national security and public safety risks, and recent border crossers,” Mr. Lechleitner added. 

He noted that between May 2023 and the end of July, 893,600 migrants were removed from the country. “The majority of all individuals encountered at the Southwest Border over the past three years have been removed, returned, or expelled,” Mr. Lechleitner wrote. 

Meanwhile, Ms. Harris was in Arizona making her second-ever VP appearance at the border with Mexico. Ms. Harris, who has struggled to win the confidence of voters when it comes to her handling of immigration, is slated to use her visit to call for tougher law enforcement at the border. 

Immigration remains one of the top issues for American voters heading to the polls this November. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released last month, voters favor Trump over Ms. Harris on the topic by 10 percentage points.