On the January 25 broadcast of his 630 KHOW-AM show, host Peter Boyles was asked to “verify” a statistic -- which a caller said he heard on Fox News -- that “there have been 45,000-plus Americans killed by illegal aliens” since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Boyles speculated that “the number's probably accurate” and said, "[C]ertainly I would suspect that somebody would try and stop them from saying it if -- or say that it isn't true, and I haven't heard any of that."

In fact, Colorado Media Matters repeatedly has called into question similar dubious figures that Boyles and his guests have asserted regarding the alleged number of deaths caused by illegal immigrants in the United States. Additionally, Boyles himself acknowledged on October 18 that Colorado Media Matters had challenged his repetition of the dubious assertion that illegal immigrants are responsible for the deaths of 25 Americans each day, a rate that would total more than 45,000 deaths since 9-11.

From the January 25 broadcast of 630 KHOW-AM's The Peter Boyles Show:

CALLER: Hey Pete. Thank you for taking the call. Real quick, I had an opportunity yesterday to watch a couple minutes of Neil Cavuto on Fox News yesterday. And he had the head of the Minuteman group, as well as a mother who was head of a group called Mothers Against Illegal Aliens --

BOYLES: Yeah, yeah.

CALLER: -- and they, they threw out a statistic that I was just really shocked at. And I wonder if you could, like, find a way to verify it. But they claimed that since September, or since 2001 -- 9-11 -- that there have been 45,000-plus Americans killed --

BOYLES: Yeah.

CALLER: -- by illegal aliens. Whether that was murder, homicide, car accidents, things of that nature. And I kind of went online and did some stats and I guess it's something that's not officially quote-unquote tracked, but that they pretty much -- you know, just through documentation and that -- can pretty much justify that. And I, I hadn't heard that before.

BOYLES: Yeah. I've -- that number gets out there, and they talk about car wrecks and that kind of stuff. I've heard it kicked both ways. I don't know. But certainly I would suspect that somebody would try and stop them from saying it if -- or say that it isn't true, and I haven't heard any of that. But I've listened to that quite a bit. I don't know what to say. I, I -- I think that the number's probably accurate.

Boyles has featured numerous guests on his program who advance dubious claims about the number of deaths caused by both legal and illegal immigrants, as Colorado Media Matters has noted (here, here, and here). Many of those dubious claims were based on assertions by U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) that noncitizens are responsible for the deaths of 25 Americans a day. That figure, multiplied by five years from September 11, 2001, to September 2006, would total about 45,625 deaths.

As Colorado Media Matters noted on October 31, King claimed his figures were based on his own “extrapolation” of figures from a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study. A Colorado Media Matters review found that there is no GAO study reporting that 25 Americans a day are killed by illegal immigrants. The review also found that the GAO reports addressed to King and figures released by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) do not support King's assertion that 28 percent of inmates in all prisons and jails are criminal aliens, which underlies his “extrapolation.”

The figure mentioned by the caller to Boyles' show was indeed cited on the January 24 broadcast of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, where Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist appeared and -- citing King -- asserted that approximately 48,000 Americans have been killed by illegal aliens since the September 11 attacks:

CAVUTO: Well, you hear everyone talking about the number of Americans killed in Iraq; you hear virtually no one talking about the number of Americans killed by illegals right here in America. Would you believe -- it's a fairly staggering number -- try 45,000 since 9-11. At least that's what Jim Gilchrist claims. He is the founder of the Minutemen. Also with us is Carla Ferrigno of Mothers Against Illegal Aliens. Let me ask you, Jim, where you got that figure?

GILCHRIST: That figure came through Congressman Steve King's office and it was based on statistical analysis by federal law enforcement. And actually the number currently to date is more like 48,000 since 9-11 -- U.S. residents killed at the hands of illegal aliens through a combination of homicide and manslaughter.