What was the average number of FBI most wanted fugitives captured per year during the Trump administration?
Executive summary
Available sources in the briefing do not provide a direct figure for the average number of FBI “Most Wanted” fugitives captured per year during the Trump administration (2017–2020); the FBI’s official pages and related summaries list fugitives and historical totals but do not break captures down by presidential term in the provided material (not found in current reporting) [1] [2]. Wikipedia and FBI pages here give cumulative counts and program history (e.g., 498 of 537 listed captured as of July 1, 2025) but not administrationspecific annual averages [2].
1. What the official FBI pages say — program scope but not the Trump-period average
The FBI’s “Fugitives” and “Ten Most Wanted” pages describe the program, current lists, and individual entries, and they host historical files and individual-case timelines, but the pages in this set do not summarize captures per year by presidential administration; they present listings and case-by-case notes instead [1] [3]. The FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” FAQ and historical pages give cumulative counts and capture/resolve percentages (for example, a Wikipedia summary drawing on FBI data reports 498 of 537 listed captured or located as of July 1, 2025), but those are aggregate program statistics, not a per-year or per-administration average for 2017–2020 [2].
2. What the public summaries and archives include (useful but limited for this question)
Available FBI feeds and the Wanted Collection publish chronological entries and dates for individual captures and postings, which could be used to construct year-by-year tallies if one compiled each capture date; the feeds include timestamps (e.g., entries dated 07.22.2021, 11.20.2024) and individual case pages [4]. However, the dataset in the briefing is a selection of pages and snippets — not a compiled, administration-specific tally — so it cannot directly answer the user’s requested average without further data collection from the full FBI archive [4] [1].
3. Secondary reporting and context: selective claims, not comprehensive counts
Fox News cited recent arrests and framed them in a political context — noting three “Most Wanted” fugitive arrests in two months under new FBI leadership — but this is reporting about a particular short period and framed with commentary from former agents; it does not supply a verified multi-year annual average for the Trump administration [5]. Other media pieces (e.g., CNN’s case stories) report individual captures and their investigative context but similarly do not produce an administrationwide average capture rate in the provided materials [6].
4. How a reliable average would be calculated from primary sources
To compute an average captures-per-year for 2017–2020 using primary FBI data you would need a complete list of captures with dates for the relevant lists (Ten Most Wanted and/or broader “Most Wanted” categories), then count captures with official capture dates falling within Jan 20, 2017–Jan 20, 2021 and divide by four years. The FBI’s public pages and chronological feeds contain the necessary raw entries (case pages and timestamps) but the material supplied here does not present that compiled calculation [1] [4].
5. Reasons the figure is not directly available in this briefing and caveats
The briefing’s FBI pages are oriented to cases and program history and include aggregate program totals (e.g., cumulative captured counts) but do not parse captures by presidential term; secondary sources excerpted here highlight specific captures or short windows and sometimes incorporate partisan framing (e.g., associating recent arrests with agency leadership changes) which can bias interpretations if used alone [2] [5]. Any calculation based on lists must be explicit about which list is counted (Ten Most Wanted only, or all FBI “Most Wanted” categories), because the FBI maintains multiple wanted lists and thousands of active fugitive investigations at any time [1] [2].
6. Practical next steps to produce the requested number
If you want a defensible average number, I can: (A) extract and compile all capture dates from the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted archive pages and Wanted Collection for 2017–2020 and compute a per-year average; or (B) restrict the scope and compute averages for a single list (e.g., Ten Most Wanted only). The sources provided here contain the raw entries needed for that compilation but not the pre-computed average; tell me which lists you want included and I will assemble the count from the FBI pages and report the calculation with citations to each capture date [1] [4].
Limitations: current reporting in the supplied set does not include a ready-made, administration-specific average, and some secondary pieces carry editorial framing rather than neutral, comprehensive tallies [5] [6].