ICE is Irritated by Facts, News Struggles to Get Facts Straight

Spokespeople for the immigration agency are upset over my research that shows the agency focusing on immigrants without criminal histories, but the news isn't always helping matters.

Today’s essay could be characterized as a meditation on irritation. ICE is irritated with me for publishing facts, the public is increasingly irritated with ICE for not doing what they said they’d do, and I’m irritated with news outlets for getting basic facts wrong.

I have been publishing a steady stream of data-driven research over the past six months that (1) predicted a rise in ICE targeting immigrants without criminal histories, (2) documented this steady rise over the past several months, and, just this week, (3) showed that non-criminal immigrant arrests now make up an objective majority.

These findings have circulated widely in news articles at leading outlets, including CNN, The Economist, Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, the Guardian, Mother Jones, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, and many more.

The findings are significant because they help us understand immigration enforcement trends, and because the data shows that the Trump administration’s rhetoric about going after dangerous criminals is not entirely accurate.

Pressed by the press about these numbers, ICE is becoming increasingly irritated and defensive. Border czar Thomas Homan¹ and Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for ICE, Tricia McLaughlin, have both reacted strongly to these well-documented data points published by the news media.

Andrew Chapados at Blaze Media published an article this week in which he cited McLaughlin’s claims that the media is pushing a “false narrative” about who ICE is arresting, detaining, and deporting. In a statement that I will try to reconstruct here, she told Blaze:

"The media continues to peddle this FALSE narrative that ICE is not targeting criminal illegal aliens. The official data tells the true story: 70% of ICE arrests were criminal illegal aliens with convictions or pending charges. … Many illegal aliens categorized as 'non-criminals' are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gang members, and more — they just don't have a rap sheet in the U.S. This deceptive 'non-criminal' categorization is devoid of reality and misleads the American public."

For the record, Chapados calls me a “journalist” rather than by my faculty title—not exactly a sign of the most competent or thorough reporting, I have to say.

As the person who has written the most and has probably been the most quoted on this topic, I take issue with Assistant Secretary McLaughlin’s spin, although she is not wrong on all counts.

The overall thrust of her statement, that the media is “peddling a false narrative,” overlooks the fact that the source for all reporting on this topic is the agency itself. Most of the reporting cites detention data published by ICE every two weeks, and more recent reporting has also drawn on agency data obtained through a FOIA lawsuit by the Deportation Data Project.

The contrast between media reports and “official data” is nonexistent. Except for some reporters who continue to cite unverifiable “insider” data, most media accounts have relied solely on official data that can be publicly obtained and verified.

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McLaughlin says that 70 percent of ICE arrests include people with criminal charges or convictions. For February until May, the percentage was actually higher than that. But the media has largely been unable to report on total numbers of ICE arrests, because the agency forced the Office of Homeland Security Statistics to stop publishing this data on a monthly basis and refuses to publish this data at all unless someones (like the Deportation Data Project) takes them to court. If McLaughlin and the agency want the public to use official numbers, they should publish those numbers—not hide them under lock and key away from public scrutiny.

In any case, the current (as of June) percentage of ICE arrests for immigrants with no criminal histories is 45 percent, not 30 as she suggests. She works in the agency; she should know this.

Instead of using arrest numbers, the media has cited ICE’s detention data. It occurs to me that perhaps McLaughlin meant to say detained population instead of arrests, since about 70 percent of people in ICE detention had criminal convictions or charges. But that has ceased to be true at the end of June when immigrants without other criminal histories, the fastest-growing group, made up 32 percent of all detainees. Again, the current official data, available for the public to see, directly contradicts McLaughlin’s statements.

Here’s a slightly more nuanced point that’s worth addressing. McLaughlin clearly takes issue with the use of the term “non-criminal” as a substitute for ICE’s category of “other immigration violator,” but she goes too far in describing it as “deceptive” and “devoid of reality.” ICE defines “other immigration violator” as “individuals without any known criminal convictions or pending charges in ICE's system of record at the time of the enforcement action.” That’s as close as you get to “non-criminal”, especially when writing for a public audience that may not know what “other immigration violator” means.

That said, McLaughlin is not wrong that “other immigration violator” could include people with criminal charges or convictions in other countries, or could include charges or convictions unknown at the time of enforcement action. But if we’re going to speculate about what the data doesn’t show, then we get to do that both ways. People with “criminal convictions” includes people with extremely serious offenses, sure—but it also includes a lot of people with all kinds of minor criminal convictions that have nothing whatsoever to do with national security or public safety.

ICE shouldn’t complain about the inadequacy of one category while failing to acknowledge the inadequacies of other categories and running a vast social media campaign to represent every single ICE arrest as if it includes rapists, murderers, and terrorists. It simply isn’t accurate, defensible, or consistent.

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To understand more about these underlying principles of chaos and hypocrisy that characterize the politics of this administration, revisit my notes on “Governing Through Confusion” and my essay on “Volatility, Hypocrisy, and Cruelty.”

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If McLaughlin’s statement is evidence that ICE is getting irritated by the facts, Tom Homan’s interview on CBS dials up the impact of my ongoing research while also illustrating why the news media is sometimes part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Video clip available online here.

CBS broadcast anchor Major Garrett invited Homan on his show to talk about immigration enforcement. Garrett’s opening question to Homan focused on who ICE is arresting and detaining—a sign that this research on the breakdown in criminal histories is affecting the agency’s attempts to represent their work in public. Here is Garrett’s question:

“According to the data, a growing number of those detained, 46 percent, are not criminals. They are here illegally, which is a crime, but they do not have other felonies on their records. Is that a trend that’s gonna continue?”

I would like to discuss Homan’s defense of ICE in as much detail as above, but there isn’t much to add on his account. Homan says what he usually says: the media is misrepresenting the data, we’re going after criminals, and also emphasizes that ICE will arrest anyone in the country unlawfully regardless of criminal history.

Homan’s part is fairly predictable. What was less predictable and more frustrating was Garrett’s opening question.

As much as the Trump administration likes to falsely complain that the news media is untrustworthy, CBS did itself—and the broader news media—no favors by asking a question that was factually wrong on three accounts in the span of ten seconds.

First, Garrett says 46 percent of people in detention are not criminals. This is not true no matter how you slice it. If by “not criminals,” we mean people with no criminal conviction, the number should have been 64 percent. If by “non criminals”, we mean people with no convictions or charges, the number should have been 32 percent. I have no idea where 46 percent comes from—but it was inaccurate. Maybe the show got confused like McLaughlin did, and he meant “arrests” rather than “detention”? That would have been closer to my calculations of 44 percent in June. Edit 07/18/2025: It occurred to me early this morning that Garrett was possibly counting people arrested by both CBP and ICE in detention, which would give us 47 percent. I’ve argued elsewhere for why including detainees arrested by CBP in these calculations is not a good reflection of general immigration enforcement across the country and why I don’t use that approach. But if that’s the number that the show used, I can see how they got there and I would consider retracting, or at least qualifying, this criticism.

Second, Garrett says that being “here illegally” is a crime. This is false. Unlawful presence in the United States is not a crime. It is a civil violation that can lead to deportation, but it is not a crime. Entering the country unlawfully is a crime, but not everyone in the U.S. unlawfully (or in ICE detention) actually entered the country unlawfully. This includes people who entered lawfully and overstayed their visa. I realize this is a bit more nuanced than most people appreciate, but it’s immigration law 101.

Third, Garrett referred to immigrants without felonies on their record. This misses the point, and constitutes a common error when people try to be more specific than is warranted. The data currently in the public domain about ICE enforcement activity does not include information about the level of criminal offense, so “felonies” is just a sloppy mistake. I tell journalists this often: do not try to be more specific than what the data says, and don’t embellish. If the data reports “criminal conviction”, just say “criminal conviction.” In fact, Homan rightly points this out in his answer when he says that criminal histories don’t only include felonies, they often include misdemeanors.

Garrett’s question failed on all three of its main pillars in what I can only lament was a missed opportunity to ask an accurate question instead of sowing confusion and giving Homan even more reason to worry that the news media can’t get the facts straight.

Perhaps my readers who have appropriate connections would care to share my little data blog posts with someone close to Major Garrett, Assistant Secretary McLaughlin, and Mr. Homan and so that CBS and ICE will have more accurately vetted data and descriptions of data in the future. I go to great lengths to make sure the data is summarized and described in straightforward, non-partisan ways that include precise terminology—all in an attempt to elevate the quality of national discourse and hold spokespeople and the news media accountable to the facts.

I am grateful to see that my research is putting pressure on ICE to answer questions about the incongruities between what they say and what they do. However, it is equally important that journalists pose these important questions without exacerbating confusion.

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1. His actual title is “White House Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations.”