On KHOW, Boyles aired Minuteman Project founder's dubious assertion that illegal immigrants kill "about 9,000 U.S. residents" per year

Summary: Peter Boyles failed to challenge the dubious assertion of his guest, Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist, that illegal immigrants kill "about 9,000 U.S. residents" annually, and did not ask Gilchrist to provide any evidence for his claim. Colorado Media Matters has documented that Boyles' program has featured numerous guests advancing similar claims about the deaths of Americans purportedly caused by illegal immigrants without providing factual support for them.

On his April 3 630 KHOW-AM broadcast, Peter Boyles allowed Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist to make the unsubstantiated and dubious claim that "according to law enforcement extrapulations (sic), about 9,000 U.S. residents are killed at the hands of ... 35 million illegal aliens annually." Gilchrist added, "That's half through murder and another half through drunk driving manslaughter, and similar non-murder incidents." Gilchrist made a similar assertion when he appeared on Boyles' July 28, 2006, broadcast and claimed that "28,000 Americans have been killed at the hands of illegal aliens since 9-11," attributing the figure to Rep. Steve King (R-IA).

Boyles has featured numerous guests advancing dubious claims about the number of deaths caused by legal and illegal immigrants, as Colorado Media Matters has documented (here, here, and here). Many of those claims were based on assertions by King that noncitizens are responsible for the deaths of 25 Americans a day. Gilchrist's figure of "about 9,000" deaths annually breaks down to approximately 25 deaths per day (9,000/365 = 24.7).

As Colorado Media Matters noted, King claimed that he based his figures on his own "extrapolat[ion]" of figures from a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study. A Colorado Media Matters review found that there is no GAO study reporting that illegal immigrants kill 25 Americans a day. The review also found that GAO reports addressed to King and figures released by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics do not support his assertion that 28 percent of inmates in all prisons and jails are criminal aliens, which underlies his "extrapolat[ion]."

The Minuteman Project is best known for volunteer patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border that, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, have drawn support from white supremacist groups.

From the April 3 broadcast of 630 KHOW-AM's The Peter Boyles Show:

GILCHRIST: The largest source of the invasion is coming from Mexico due to the political, social, and economic card. And in Mexico, you can't blame people for wanting to seek a better life. However, it's a problem when they come here to plunder our welfare systems and also, not only to seek a better life in a civilized manner, but come here to engage in criminal cartels, and drug cartels, the human cargo cartels, other criminal activities. And, also, according to law enforcement extrapulations, about 9,000 U.S. residents are killed at the hands of these 35 million illegal aliens annually.

BOYLES: Mmm-hmm.

GILCHRIST: That's half through murder and another half through drunk driving manslaughter, and similar non-murder incidents.

BOYLES: Do you believe --

GILCHRIST: Those are staggering numbers.

Gilchrist did not provide any evidence -- nor did Boyles ask for any -- for his claim that "law enforcement extrapulations" show that "9,000 U.S. residents" annually are "killed at the at the hands" of illegal immigrants. The number appears to have originated with King, who in May 2006 claimed in at least two speeches and a press release that illegal immigrants murder 12 Americans each day and kill 13 each day as a result of drunken driving accidents, for a total of 25 deaths per day.

King misleadingly "extrapolate[d]" figures from an April 2005 GAO study to formulate the questionable statistic regarding the number of deaths caused by illegal immigrants. The GAO report itself made no such claim.

The study showed that "noncitizens convicted of crimes while in this country legally or illegally" comprised approximately 27 percent of the United States federal prison population in 2004. As Colorado Media Matters repeatedly has pointed out, the GAO study reported accurate numbers only for the federal prison population -- which comprised less than 10 percent of the U.S. prison population -- and not for state or local prison populations. Furthermore, like Gilchrist, King attributed the figure to "illegal" immigrants, whereas the GAO study reported the percentage of federal prisoners who were "noncitizens convicted of crimes while in this country legally or illegally."

—C.H.