Criminal Justice: Data on Noncitizen Incarcerations, Convictions, Removals, and Costs

Filed 1h ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

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Laconic Granny

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Sam Hood · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

A GAO report finds the average number of noncitizens incarcerated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons fell 44 percent, from about 36,300 in fiscal 2017 to roughly 20,300 in fiscal 2024. More than half of those incarcerations stemmed from immigration-related offenses, with another 30 percent tied to drug crimes, and ICE removed 76 percent — about 84,800 — of the 111,200 noncitizens who completed federal incarceration terms over that period.

Comprehensive state and local data don't exist, but the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program shows SCAAP-eligible incarcerations dropped 43 percent from 2016 to 2022. The federal government spent more than $9 billion incarcerating noncitizens from fiscal 2016 through 2023, roughly $8 billion of it on BOP costs, not counting unreimbursed state and local spending.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A 44 percent drop in noncitizen incarceration is not the story you'd guess from the volume of the debate around it, and the fact that most of those convictions were for immigration paperwork rather than the violent crime that gets top billing in speeches is worth sitting with. Numbers like these tend to arrive quietly and leave without much company. Whoever is shaping the public's sense of the threat here is not working from this report.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: Laconic Granny · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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