On Monday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “Cuomo,” acting ICE Director Todd Lyons argued that statistics on what percentage of the people arrested by ICE have criminal records aren’t entirely accurate because they omit pending charges from people who have been released due to lax bail laws and people who have pending convictions, which he stated that the agency is also focused on.
After host Chris Cuomo showed a graph of the criminal status of people arrested by ICE and what percentage have a conviction, what percentage have a charge, and what percentage have neither and said the ratio of criminals to non-criminals is “totally out of whack,” Lyons said, “I think one thing that you don’t see on that graph is pending criminal charges, right? So, we do have those individuals that have been charged of some pretty serious crimes, yet, either because of bail reform or no cash bond, they’ve been released.”
He continued, “And what I can point to is that 70% of the individuals that are listed as non-criminal, well, they do have pending serious criminal charges, right? … So, while they don’t have a criminal conviction, they do have pending criminal convictions. And that’s what we’re focused on as well.”
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