Trumpanzee Lying About MS-13 Too-- And Why Would That Be Different From Everything Else He Lies About

I'm so worried about my housekeeper-- not just because she's been away for two weeks and my house is a mess. She's a U.S. citizen visiting her family in El Salvador, which, according to Señor Trumpanzee, is being overrun by deportees from the vicious criminal gang, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), the gang he's rounding up and sending back to that country. One of my closest friends, a Trump hater, has told me that if he gets rid of MS-13 it will have been worth having Trumpanzee as president. But is it true? Earlier today, a new poll from Survey Monkey found that only 13% of Americans find Trump to be honest and trustworthy. So... is Trump actually getting rid of MS-13, "by the thousands." Since Trump tends to lie about everything all the time, PolitiFact took a look.

On Tuesday, at a over-wrought made-for-TV ceremony Trump babbled that "Recently, MS-13 gang members called for the assassination of New York City police officers so the gang could quote, 'take back the streets.' They got it wrong. We are the ones who are taking back the streets. We are getting them out of our country by the thousands. Every week we're setting new records on-- we have a 'catch and release' program, too. It’s called we catch them and we release them in the country they came back from, we are getting them out. Or we are putting them in prison."

ICE does not track gang removals by specific gang, but the agency does specifically target MS-13 members for arrest and removal on the basis of their immigration violations, said Matthew Bourke, a spokesman for the agency.

Bourke said 5,396 gang members were removed in fiscal year 2017 (which includes about four months of the Obama administration, running from Oct. 1, 2016 through Sept. 30, 2017).

From Oct. 1, 2017 through Dec. 16, 2017 (the latest data available), 1,082 gang members were removed.

It’s impossible to determine how many of them were MS-13 gang members.

There is other data indicating the Trump administration’s efforts to deport MS-13 gang members, but that doesn’t necessarily support Trump’s claim.

ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division arrested nearly 800 MS-13 gang members in fiscal year 2017. 

ICE’s investigations division arrested 405 MS-13 gang members, Bourke said, citing first-quarter data for fiscal year 2018.

"The time it takes to remove a validated gang member can vary depending on whether the alien has started removal proceedings; whether the alien has a final order of removal; or whether the alien has pending criminal charges in a local jurisdiction," Bourke said.

It’s unlikely that all of the MS-13 gang members arrested in 2017 were already deported, because of the time required to remove someone after an arrest, said Jorja Leap, an anthropologist and adjunct professor at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs who researches gangs and criminal justice.

"Most members of MS-13 that I know that have been arrested are being held in court pending trial," Leap said. "The process is lengthy."

Our ruling

Trump said of MS-13 gang members, "We are getting them out of our country by the thousands."

It’s difficult to determine how many MS-13 members have been deported under Trump’s administration, because immigration officials don’t break down deportation data by gang affiliation.

At least 1,200 MS-13 gang members were arrested from Oct. 1, 2016, through the end of Trump’s first calendar year. The time between an arrest and deportation varies per case, but an expert told us the process is lengthy.

Trump’s statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.

CNN reported early in March that Trump is pumping up the numbers by having ICE deport more non-criminal immigrants. "A businessman and father from Ohio. An Arizona mother. The Indiana husband of a Trump supporter. They were unassuming members of their community, parents of US citizens and undocumented," reported CNN. "And they were deported by the Trump administration. It's left many wondering why the US government is arresting and deporting a number of individuals who have often lived in the country for decades, checked in regularly with immigration officials and posed no danger to their community. Many have family members who are American citizens, including school-aged children. President Donald Trump famously said in a presidential debate that his focus is getting the 'bad hombres' and the 'bad, bad people' out first to secure the border, but one of his first actions after taking office was an executive order that effectively granted immigration agents the authority to arrest and detain any undocumented immigrant they wanted.

Where the Obama administration focused deportation efforts almost exclusively on criminals and national security threats, as well as immigrants who recently arrived illegally, the Trump administration has also targeted immigrants with what are called final orders of removal-- an order from a judge that a person can be deported and has no more appeals left.

In Trump's first year, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 109,000 criminals and 46,000 people without criminal records -- a 171% increase in the number of non-criminal individuals arrested over 2016.

The Trump administration regularly says its focus is criminals and safety threats, but has also repeatedly made clear that no one in the country illegally will be exempted from enforcement

. "We target criminal aliens, but we're not going to exempt an entire class of (non)citizens," Department of Homeland Security spokesman Tyler Houlton told reporters Wednesday.

"All of those in violation of immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States," ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez added in a statement.

Critics say including people with decades-old final orders of removal as priorities is more about boosting numbers by targeting easily catchable individuals than about public safety threats.

"A final order of removal is absolutely not indicative of a person's threat to public safety," said former Obama administration ICE chief and DHS counsel John Sandweg. "You cannot equate convicted criminals with final orders of removal."

Sandweg said that people with final orders, especially those who are checking in regularly with ICE, are easy to locate and can be immediately deported without much legal recourse. Identifying and locating criminals and gang members takes more investigative work.

There are more than 90,000 people on so-called orders of supervision who check in regularly with ICE officials, according to the agency. And there are more than 1 million who have removal proceedings pending or who have been ordered to leave the country but have not.

As a result of the change in ICE policy, headlines about heart-wrenching cases of deportation separating children from parents or caregivers have been a regular occurrence.

..."We shouldn't spend one penny on low-hanging fruit," said Sarah Saldana, the most recent director of ICE before Trump's inauguration. "What we should be spending money is on getting people who are truly a threat to public safety."