Nearly a quarter of the inmates in federal prisons were born outside the United States, and more than half of those have final deportation orders, the Department of Justice said Tuesday. The Justice Department published statistics on the prison population to comply with directives in President Donald Trump’s January executive order overhauling the immigration system.
“Illegal aliens who commit additional crimes in the United States are a threat to public safety and a burden on our criminal justice system.” The foreign-born prison population as of March 25 totals 45,493, or 24 percent of all federal inmates. Of that group, 3,939 now are American citizens. That leaves 41,554 inmates who remain citizens of foreign countries. Some 22,541 of them, or 54.4 percent, have final orders to be deported when they complete their sentences. Another 33.4 percent, 13,886, are under investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for possible deportation.