And if you really want to get granular, start talking about the percentage of criminal aliens arrested by ICE as a result of notifications from other law enforcement agencies vs. the percentage of criminal aliens arrested directly by ICE.
That's an excellent point, since even sanctuary states hand over felons. If those count toward the criminal arrests reported in the 2025 data, it would imply that ICE's current militancy has even less to do with capturing the worst of the worst.
To my mind, both Red and Blue are pushing half-truths, admixtures of truth and falsity. What makes a half-truth an egregious lie is when it is touted as simply "truth" rather than *half-truth* (that is, without any qualification). In my opinion, the Red narrative that "ICE is deporting mostly criminals" is the egregious lie, because Red doesn't acknowledge that those "criminals" include many not actually criminally convicted.
I remember well the Blue tribe in the 1990s defending Bill Clinton for stating, under oath (and to the American public) that he "did not - have - sex" with Monica Lewinsky -- because the nature of the sex act involved (fellatio) was something done *to him* by Lewinsky.. Of course, that was a lie, because he made that statement *without qualification* as though he were totally uninvolved sexually with Lewinsky.
So no, I'm not about to let the Red Tribe off the hook on the technicality of including immigrants accused, but not convicted, of criminal offenses.
(As to plea bargaining, I totally agree. IMO, plea bargaining is the #1 injustice in our "justice" system. But that deserves another conversation).
I don't think you can call one side an egregious liar here without calling the other side egregious liars as well, for inverse reasons. ALL statements about whether ICE is/isn't deporting mostly criminals require qualification, and neither side is adding those qualifications.
It is less egregious for the Blue tribe, for the simple reason that the burden of proof is on the Red Tribe, the side advocating for and performing this action, to justify it.
And it doesn't help the Red Tribe that their spokespeople have been caught lying about Renee Good and Alex Pretti, calling them "domestic terrorists" which is BS, even if you maintain they were both actively interfering with immigration enforcement,
The Blue Tribe has lied _a very great deal_ about the protests as well, and continues to do so. Attorney General Keith Ellison has a lawsuit right now that has a number of claims that he *must* know are as completely false as everything the current admin said about Pretti. There are no clean hands here.
I think the Red Tribe's burden of proof is satisfied by criminal charges. After all, the law requires that they be deported merely for illegal presence, even without any criminality. All the Red Tribe aims to show is that a very large portion of the people being deported are criminals. They probably can't point at any specific case and say, "That one is definitely a criminal" prior to adjudication, but they probably can look at the whole and say, "The overwhelming majority of these people are criminals," in the aggregate. Innocent people do get charged with crimes (and we have tons of protections against criminal punishments in case that happens), but the truth is that it's pretty rare! And people being deported *aren't* being criminally punished!
So, no, if we're going with "burdens of proof" as the explanation here, I think it's the Blue Tribe's burden to show that the White House is deporting innocents. Instead of meeting that burden, they're just pretending everyone without a conviction is innocent as a dove, in the aggregate.
(EDIT: To be clear, my position remains that the Red and Blue tribes are about equally wrong here, not that the Blue Tribe is especially wrong. But you're saying that Red Tribe is uniquely wrong, so I'm pushing back on that.)
If illegals are deports simply for being illegals, that's one thing. But the constant line is that they are deporting "the worst of the worst", which is a higher bar to show than mere criminality. And "overwhelming majority" are criminals, even if only charged? C'mon, James.
I suspect you might be looking at reporting that is local to the Twin Cities that is not making national news (other than Fox/OAN/Newsmax). So we may not agree, this time.
And you could be right, and it would not change my views that Trump's immigration enforcement is a massive overreach, ignoring due process, and performatively and needlessly cruel. That opinion does not depend on specifics in your neck of the woods.
Nor do I intend to exonerate the Blue Tribe. Their often condescending downplaying of concerns about illegal immigration as "racist," was a big factor in the rise of Donald Trump.
Suppose I happen to overhear someone confess to (theft)/(murder)/(insert-crime-here). I happen to know him well enough to be reasonably confident he's telling the truth. On the way to reporting him to the police, I give you a call.
Is it proper for me to call him a (thief)/(murderer)? A criminal? After all, he hasn't been investigated by the police yet, let alone arrested or convicted!
I submit the answer is still "yes." It's still a just description, because there is an underlying reality of whether he has in fact committed a crime, and I am making a claim as to that underlying reality.
Of course, it's also just for you to point out that my claim could be incorrect and hasn't yet been tested in a court of law.
The dividing line isn't "objective information". A whole lot of our sociological information comes from polls that're eventually rooted in individual testimonials just like my phone call to you.
Keep the links in the chain trustworthy enough, and there's still a point at which you can say "murderer". Or average it out across statistically-significant numbers of testimonies, and you can say "X% of this list (standard deviation Y) are most probably murderers."
Where formal criminal convictions come in, I believe, is that we have told our government that this sort of information isn't enough. They - unlike everyone else - need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Or at least, they do before imposing any criminal consequences. Public relations statements like this aren't quite the same thing. They're a disturbing slippery slope, but what else is new with our current officials?
You can maybe make a case that people who are repeatedly arrested and held but with charges dismissed, pled down or acquitted, are criminals. But I don't think that Trump/MAGA supporters are trying to make that case, not with their constant "worst of the worst" language.
And I have heard of cases where ICE has detained legal immigrants who had minor offenses years previously, like DUI or drug posession, to make their quotas.
I argue that someone is a criminal the instant that they commit the crime, whether or not they are ever noticed or convicted. However, unless you have firsthand knowledge (like your example), I recommend the phrase "alleged criminal", because that is a phrasing which gives the benefit of doubt and presumption of innocence.
4. Illiberalism. Populists have great difficulty respecting the rule of law. If one listens to the explanations that they offer for their actions, a great deal of this reflects a bias toward concreteness in their thinking. They think the purpose of the rules is to stop bad people from doing bad things, but since they themselves are good people trying to do good things, they cannot see why they should be constrained by the rules. They have enormous difficulty treating themselves and the other political parties symmetrically. (Americans are currently being subjected to a non-stop display of this.) Unfortunately, as those of us who teach liberal political philosophy know, there is an essential feat of abstraction at the foundation of all liberal principles. John Stuart Mill described it as a rejection of the the “logic of persecutors”: “that we may persecute others because we are right... but they must not persecute us because they are wrong.” The same feat of abstraction is involved in many other liberal protections. For example, populists often complain about lawyers “defending criminals.” It requires a cognitively decoupled representation to see that lawyers defend people who are accused of a crime, and even if many of these people are in fact criminals, one cannot describe them as such until after that determination has been made, through a procedure that requires legal representation. Similarly, populists find conflict of interest rules extremely difficult to follow, because these rules are typically designed to avoid putting people into situations in which their judgment might be improperly influenced. This hypothetical construct is unavailable to intuition, creating a strong desire to permit the behaviour so long as it is not actually bad.
EDIT: I am very careful in not imputing criminality to anyone accused, not because in many cases I am not personally convinced of the accused's guilt, but rather because of the aftermath of certain trials where an acquittal was entered despite widespread societal cries for a conviction. See, most notably, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Jian_Ghomeshi, which led to certain defences being banned. (As the Wiki article notes, the changes were proposed by a Senate report prior to the trial, but not enacted until after it.) It would not surprise me if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_Canada_sexual_assault_scandal#2025_criminal_trial leads to other changes that degrade the rights of the accused in such cases, again because of a widespread societal view that the acquittal was improper.
"Although the slogan "Believe the victim" has become popularized of late, it has no place in a criminal trial. To approach a trial with the assumption that the complainant is telling the truth is the equivalent of imposing a presumption of guilt on the person accused of sexual assault and then placing a burden on him to prove his innocence. That is antithetical to the fundamental principles of justice enshrined in our constitution and the values underlying our free and democratic society."
I don't think this is quite on-point, because I find it quite easy to hold all of the following propositions in my head at once:
(1) X committed a crime of which I have third-hand knowledge.
(2) Since my knowledge is third-hand, it is possible X did not commit that crime.
(3) I am confident in my third-hand information sources and so conclude it is highly likely X committed the crime.
(4) X is entitled to a full and robust defense before the law may punish him for the crime I'm pretty sure he committed.
(5) X is a criminal.
(6) X is not a convicted criminal.
(7) Lawyers who defend X against the charge are doing an essential job in our justice system, and should be criticized only for defending X too *feebly*, not too zealously.
(8) There are contexts where X's alleged-but-unproved criminality may legitimately be acted upon, even lacking a conviction. (For example, a police officer accused of running a murder-for-hire ring should have his badge and gun taken pending investigation; a police officer *charged* with running a murder-for-hire ring should be jailed pending trial.)
(9) Deportation statistics are one of those contexts.
What's being pointed out is that for some (not you, of course) a lot of these get conflated and/or disregarded. If you read the article, what you describe is what the author is discussing as an example of dual-process theory. You find it easy to hold all of those in your head at once and distinguish between them; a lot of people don't find that easy (and in some cases resent as intellectual elites those who show that they routinely do).
For instance, someone might accept the first three points. At this point, their intuitive cognitive process jumps to 5 and, on the basis of accepting that, vilify, reversing 7, any lawyer just satisfying their role under 4 and insist on 6 as a direct consequence of 5. It takes an active cognitive effort to switch to the analytical process and arrive at the list you presented, and a further effort to limit the range of acceptable consequences per point 8.
The issue is the cognitive friction between the intuitive and analytical processes. I've had to catch myself quite a bit with it recently, what with everything coming out of the Epstein files (yes, I think Donald probably touched children inappropriately, proceeding to 3; no, he hasn't been convicted of it, so my intuitive instinct, exacerbated by my dislike of the man for much more concrete reasons, to jump to 5 has to be suppressed; repeat for others named there, and try to focus my ire on stuff like Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's not even facing questioning as yet to my knowledge). The adage "where there's smoke, there's fire" is perfectly fine when it comes to literal fires, where the resources lost racing to the scene of a possible fire are far lower than what would be lost not responding to an actual fire, but it abstractly describes part of how the intuitive process applies in, say, criminal legal matters, where it becomes much more dangerous to make that leap.
For that matter, this runs in reverse as well, where someone might be so successful in ingraining the analytical process that it becomes intuitive, or at least cognitively indistinguishable from the intuitive process, to the point where they deny 8 altogether. (This is exacerbated by stories like https://www.reddit.com/r/policeuk/comments/lhr1fl/i_lost_my_job_for_a_case_that_ended_with_nfa_when/ where someone loses their job simply for having been arrested and put in jail, and thus unable to show up at work, despite no further action--NFA--being taken.)
I hope that helps explain why I consider your article, and Heath's, to be linked.
Thanks, James! The latest (apparent) fact I came across is that the chief federal law under discussion when people talk about illegal aliens is 8 U.S. Code 1325, "Improper entry by alien." "Improper" almost sounds like an error in etiquette. Maximum penalty for first offense is a fine, and/or no more than six months in jail. Basically, a misdemeanor. "Criminal" sounds like overkill as a description. I have been known to jaywalk, to cross the street without walking all the way to the corner, and to drive a touch over the speed limit. I could get fined for any of these. I'd be surprised if someone referred to me as having a criminal record. I also saw a post by an immigration attorney remarking that the offense has a five-year statute of limitations, which seems to mean that anyone who has been living here longer than that time cannot be charged with that offense. I'd be interested in whether any of this is mistaken.
By the way, I hope your cold is getting better. Just getting over one myself.
Hey, Richard! Always good to see you! I am FINALLY feeling better. I scheduled this post yesterday afternoon thinking I would spend the evening doing one last editing pass, but instead I passed out cold and slept for 12 hours. Happily, when I woke up, I found myself finally back to 95% of regular. Beats the flu!
Q: Wait, is entering the country illegally a crime? I thought it was just a civil offense, like a traffic ticket.
Illegal entry into the United States is a federal offense under 8 USC 1325, carrying a maximum prison sentence of up to six months on the first offense (higher on subsequent offenses). That makes it a Class B misdemeanor (18 USC 3559), which means it is alternatively punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 plus an additional civil penalty of up to $250. That’s quite a bit more than my worst traffic ticket.
But I'll expand on that somewhat here, to make the point more emphatically!
I don't know the law in WA, but here in Minnesota, jaywalking is a petty misdemeanor. It carries no possible prison term and a *technical* maximum fine of $300 (but the penalty statute is written to cover a huge sweeping range of traffic offenses and jaywalkers don't generally get anywhere close to the maximum).
On the other hand, here are some other Class B federal misdemeanors:
* Obstructing federal mail (18 USC 1701)
* Attempting to influence a juror (18 USC 1504)
* Breaching the Capitol, e.g. on January 6 (40 USC 5104 - many convicted under this statute)
* Storming the floor of the House of Representatives (same)
* Counterfeiting the Great Seal of the United States (18 USC 713)
* Simple assault (18 USC 113)
These aren't felonies. Illegal entry is not murder. But they also seem to me to be in a considerably different category from jaywalking, and those who commit them are properly called "criminals."
The five-year-statute of limitations you heard is true, but trivially true; the statute of limitations is five years for *all* federal crimes, unless otherwise specified. (18 USC 3282) Illegal entry is not otherwise specified. This is not a comment on the seriousness of the crime (other than to say it is an unexceptional crime), since even most felonies have the five-year statute of limitations, but rather, "to protect individuals from having to defend themselves against charges when the basic facts may have become obscured by the passage of time..." (CRS RL31253, which helpfully lists the exceptions).
In a bench trial, I think it likely he would have been found guilty of misdemeanor assault--a crime with which he was only charged after a grand jury refused to indict on a felony charge. But the trial jury acquitted him, in what was very plausibly a case of jury nullification.
(I'm not sure if I should ask your opinion on Roy Bryant and John William Milam, so while I bring that up here as what seems to me to have been plausibly another example of jury nullification, on a much more serious charge, comment on that only if you feel certain you can and should.)
This case is hard. In general, I would not object to someone categorizing Dunn as a criminal, nor to someone categorizing him as a non-criminal. If pressed to categorize him myself, I would put him in the non-criminal bucket, because it is plausible that the statute should be read the way the jury apparently read it and they acquitted him and I stand behind juries. But, before the acquittal, I would have more likely viewed him as a criminal.
It's not unheard of for me to have to switch categories. After his conviction on pedophilia allegations, I called Cardinal Pell a criminal pedophile (dunno if I did so on this blog or not, but I certainly did do that). Later, he was acquitted by a higher court, on the grounds that he could not possibly have done what he was accused of doing, and I found that reasoning persuasive, so I stopped calling him a criminal.
But then there are *really* nasty cases like the murderers of Emmett Till, whom you bring up here. I'm not sure whether I'm missing something, so I guess I'm not at all certain that I can or should comment on them specifically, but my understanding is that they were acquitted by a jury, but later confessed to the crime. In general, I think people who (plausibly) confess to crimes can be reasonably identified as criminals, at least in some contexts. Whether that applies in Bryant and Milam's case... I'm not sure, and I take your caution seriously, so I'll leave it alone for now.
Another case that comes to mind along those same lines is O.J. Simpson. Once again, I won't tell off anyone for calling him a criminal or non-criminal, since he was acquitted... but, if forced to decide, I think the weight of evidence plus his pseudo-confession plus the hinky circumstances of his acquittal add up to him being a criminal.
So I guess my rule is to defer to juries unless I have some quite strong reason to believe the jury got it wrong. Doesn't seem strong enough to me in Dunn's case, but does seem strong enough in Pell's and Simpson's case.
On Bryant and Milam, Wikipedia cites a source from 2009 still under copyright to note that some jurors felt that the men were guilty, just that life imprisonment (never mind the death penalty) was too harsh a punishment given that Till was black and the accused were white. Given that the case is a flashpoint in race relations in the US I feel I shouldn't say anything more either.
On Simpson, I think we part ways there, because I wouldn't be comfortable calling him a criminal in relation to the deaths of Brown Simpson and Goldman--whether I like it or not, he was acquitted by a criminal trial jury. (I am, however, wholly comfortable now with calling him a criminal in general, because in 2008 he was found guilty on twelve criminal charges related to a burglary.) So too with Dunn; he was acquitted, and so I don't think it's proper to refer to him as a criminal. But given that it could either be outright nullification, or a case of a statute admitting multiple plausible interpretations by a jury, I don't think I'd chastise someone for calling him a criminal in a colloquial sense (that said, I don't think the term "criminal" should be used in a colloquial sense at all).
By the same logic you give for George Pell, on the other hand, I'm quite comfortable with calling Donald Trump a (convicted) criminal at this time, but will cease to do so should his 2024 convictions be overturned on appeal.
As I said elsewhere, the Ghomeshi trial and its aftermath have led me to be extremely, perhaps overly, cautious when it comes to these things.
What happened to Ghomeshi anyway? The initial allegations made the news here (at least on NPR), but NPR got bad shortly thereafter and I stopped listening, so I never found out how it turned out.
I have no problem with people calling Donald Trump a criminal. I'm more annoyed with them calling him a President! :P
He was acquitted because the evidence at trial (it was a bench trial) did not support the claims beyond a reasonable doubt. Nonetheless he lost his job at the CBC and is now a podcaster.
(A dangerous trend I've seen as a counter to #MeToo and #BelieveVictims and such is people espousing the view that if a claim of sexual assault fails at trial, the complainant should be immediately found guilty of defamation--never mind that there's a large distance between failing the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard and actually uttering a falsehood. As an apocryphal Scottish defence attorney quipped, "Laddie, it's not my job to prove you innocent; it's my job to ensure your guilt has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.")
The big change made in 2018 was that the "rape shield" provision of the Criminal Code was expanded to include communications. Compare https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-276-20030101.html to https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-276-20181213.html and note particularly the addition of section (4). (The current version of the section, found at https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-276.html, removes the reference to Section 159, because that section, a partial prohibition of anal intercourse, was repealed in 2019.) Part of how the defence cast doubt on the complainants' credibility was by presenting past messages exchanged between Ghomeshi and the complainants. (That said, given what was added in 2018, between (4) and the new (2)(a), I'm not sure how much of an impact the changes would have had on Ghomeshi's trial specifically.)
As I said, the 2018 changes had been recommended in 2012. But they weren't enacted until after Ghomeshi's acquittal, and I at least am reasonably sure that the recommendations were acted upon because of public outrage at that verdict. I actually don't mind 276(4) itself, but I very much mind the final impetus for its enactment seemingly being a criminal acquittal that a lot of people thought was incorrect.
On the second point, meanwhile, after Yoon Suk Yeol tried to impose martial law in South Korea, blowback from voters was so extreme that some members of his own party turned on him and joined in voting to impeach (it required a two-thirds majority in the unicameral legislature and the President's party had just over a third of the seats), the Constitutional Court (which tries impeachments) ruled unanimously that the impeachment was valid, the ensuing snap Presidential election saw the main opposition party's candidate win handily, and then prosecutors sought the death penalty for Yoon.
I'm not sure why it's fruitful to categorize people as criminals or not. I'm still less sure why it's useful to draw the line at a certain level of misdemeanor that happens to put the group of people currently under discussion over the line, and yourself and the people you're friends with mostly not.
Most people have committed some kind of crime sometime in their life. For most of us, that crime was relatively harmless. Different kinds of people get prosecuted for harmless crimes differentially. Sometimes laws punish harmless action specifically in order to punish categories of people. Describing how lightly or severely the United States criminalizes immigrants doesn't make their actions more or less wrongful.
Comparing the average illegal entry to a Jan 6 insurrectionist is dirty pool--yes, most of those folks were charged only with misdemeanors, basically only for trespassing, rather than for an attempt to seize the United States government. That's more an illustration of the unseriousness of the charges brought against insurrectionists than of the seriousness of Class B misdemeanors.
Sure, the maximum sentences for Class B are well over your average speeding ticket. But speeding on federal land can be a Class B misdemeanor! Illegal camping is also a class B misdemeanor. It's more serious than Class C and less than Class A, all of which are less serious than any felony.
The maximum penalties exist, but it's not unusual for misdemeanors to be plea bargained into community service or other penalties with no misdemeanor conviction. (For some misdemeanors, like drug possession, there are specific legal offramps passed by Congress to allow clemency.)
Of course, there are lots of legally deportable folks who haven't committed any misdemeanor at all. For them, it *is* purely civil law. But for those who did commit a misdemeanor--sure, you've made the point that it's not the legal equivalent of a late library fee. But it's also below a threshold where dubbing people "criminals" is especially informative (if indeed it ever is).
We don't need to speculate! We have numbers from DHS for Trump's first year in office of his second term.
Less than 14% with violent criminal histories. Within that, it's mostly assault, and only 0.5% murder.
60% had convictions *or charges*--but that *includes* misdemeanor illegal entry charges, rather than charges in addition to those. Only half of that 60% definitely committed any crime beyond illegal entry. (We can't say for sure about the other half, but if they did do anything else, it wasn't serious enough to warrant coding in DHS' data.)
These of course are DHS' numbers, so if they have bias, it'll be toward categorizing people as criminals. More scrutinized numbers of criminality may or may not be lower.
Who's speculating? The figures used throughout this article are *also* from DHS numbers during the first year of this presidential term.
(This CBS story features useful new information -- specifically, a breakdown of particular charges, which I don't think we had before -- but it posted 6 hours after this article did. There's a 6% discrepancy between CBS's reported figure of 60% and FactCheck.org's analysis of DHS's data linked in this article, which gave a figure of 66%, but this is a fairly small discrepancy and there are a number of possible explanations for it.)
We know that "All other crimes" includes at least one case of identity theft and at least one case of distribution of child pornography, so I don't think they're coded into "all other" based on seriousness.
I do thank CBS for offering the best possible news peg for this article. Who knew everyone on Twitter would be arguing about which way to present this data is least misleading just a few hours after I posted?
I misread you as speaking about Trump's first term, and not having the data yet for 2025!
Good examples to show that "all other" isn't "not that bad" in all cases. I would bet money that the majority of "all other" *is* only the illegal entry charge, and the overwhelming majority is nothing a reasonable person would uproot someone's life over.
But let's be generous to the administration and assume that half of that 30% is something we'd all agree causes genuine harm. In that case we'd be looking at 45% total convictions or charges on something harmful, inclusive of the 14% violent offenders.
No matter what, we have 40% with no crime at all, and it's pretty reasonable to assume at least half-ish not creating any present problem.
It's also important to point out that ICE has been arresting people whose criminal histories are quite old. Deporting someone with a DUI conviction from fifteen years ago, with sentence long since served, is not the same as initiating removal for an assault committed on camera yesterday. *How much* is ICE doing this? Is it the exception or the rule? I don't know, and I bet we'd both like numbers on that.
if 40% of those deported by ICE have no other crime than illegal immigration, then it follows 60% do have some other crime, and therefore the claim that "ICE is mostly targeting criminals", even with the understanding that we're excluding illegal presence in the US from that context, is accurate. Most just means "more often than not", doesn't it?
For the record, I'm on team "remove every illegal immigrant yesterday", so I am aware I am biased, but that seems that your granted percentages agree with the administration's position.
Please pause for a moment on that one, because if you maintain the same opinion after revising that fact, your opinion might not be very susceptible to facts.
60% have *any* crime *or charges*, including a *charge* (without conviction) of illegal entry.
Only half of those, 30%, definitely have convictions *or charges* other than illegal entry.
That's not a good rate for saying that ICE is going after criminals.
Especially considering the flagrancy with which this administration makes unfounded criminal accusations. Or the frequency with which ICE is pursuing cases with illegal entry after many years beyond the statute of limitations. Or the fact that even sanctuary states hand over felons, so that the 14% who are violent offenders likely do not require ICE's militant tactics.
Can you explain why you think removing immigrants who have not committed any crime other than possibly illegal entry a decade or more ago is a good action? And why you think it's so good it's worth spending billions of dollars on?
I do want to highlight a scenario which I believe supplies a significant number of those non-criminal arrests, although I do grant that 60/40 on this isn't ideal:
Suppose you are an ICE/CBP officer. Today's target is [some violent criminal here], who is illegally present in [insert sanctuary district here]. Despite your raid on the known residence of the target occurring at literally sunup, protestors and agitators are there complicating matters anyway when you arrive. Some of them obstruct you from arresting your target, although you get him anyway. However, you had to arrest 4 protesters due to the level of obstruction, and a person who also lived at that residence. You targeted 1 individual, arrested 6. However, because of the jurisdiction, if you hand the 4 protesters over to the local DA, they're more likely to commend them than prosecute them for obstructing ICE, so you simply drop the charges that you may have otherwise made. You now have 6 arrests, 1 deportation of a violent criminal (assuming that goes according to plan), and 4 or 5 (if the other resident doesn't have any other reason to be detained) folks who are summarily released with no crimes or charges ever being alleged. Would you consider this scenario a successful mission, even if it looks like a 17% conviction/arrest rate?
First, thanks for granting that you'd misread some comments and that the correctly interpreted numbers aren't ideal. Lots of us on both sides just want to dig our heels in a lot of the time.
I hadn't had the impression that protestors were included in these numbers at all! But if they are, despite how visible protestors want every arrest to be, I'm skeptical that the actual numbers would make that big of a dent in the ~400,000 total.
Conversely, we know that ICE sometimes arrests people who are here entirely legally. This used to be not terribly common, per James' portrayal, but in the last year, ICE has repeatedly violated court orders to release individuals or groups even after they have been determined to have been here legally. This habitual violation of court orders to incarcerate the innocent *is not normal.* It will likely be a long time before we have an accounting of how many innocent people have been held at length.
"Can you explain why you think removing immigrants who have not committed any crime other than possibly illegal entry a decade or more ago is a good action? And why you think it's so good it's worth spending billions of dollars on?" -- Yes:
1) Crime should not be allowed to benefit criminals
2) The benefit of illegal immigration is living in these United States
3) Therefore, any illegal immigrants found to be living in these United States should be immediately removed, and permanently barred from returning.
From where I sit, illegal immigration is a crime (morally) on par with wage theft or unjust taxation. That they've been benefitting from it for decades is actually reason, to me, to *prioritize* that person, not to ignore them.
Or, speaking of the information environment being cracked, how about using AI tools to doctor an image of someone under arrest to make them appear to be crying?
Are you saying that only an _actual_ fever dream could have provided that RvB revival?
There seems to be some correlation!
And if you really want to get granular, start talking about the percentage of criminal aliens arrested by ICE as a result of notifications from other law enforcement agencies vs. the percentage of criminal aliens arrested directly by ICE.
That's an excellent point, since even sanctuary states hand over felons. If those count toward the criminal arrests reported in the 2025 data, it would imply that ICE's current militancy has even less to do with capturing the worst of the worst.
To my mind, both Red and Blue are pushing half-truths, admixtures of truth and falsity. What makes a half-truth an egregious lie is when it is touted as simply "truth" rather than *half-truth* (that is, without any qualification). In my opinion, the Red narrative that "ICE is deporting mostly criminals" is the egregious lie, because Red doesn't acknowledge that those "criminals" include many not actually criminally convicted.
I remember well the Blue tribe in the 1990s defending Bill Clinton for stating, under oath (and to the American public) that he "did not - have - sex" with Monica Lewinsky -- because the nature of the sex act involved (fellatio) was something done *to him* by Lewinsky.. Of course, that was a lie, because he made that statement *without qualification* as though he were totally uninvolved sexually with Lewinsky.
So no, I'm not about to let the Red Tribe off the hook on the technicality of including immigrants accused, but not convicted, of criminal offenses.
(As to plea bargaining, I totally agree. IMO, plea bargaining is the #1 injustice in our "justice" system. But that deserves another conversation).
I don't think you can call one side an egregious liar here without calling the other side egregious liars as well, for inverse reasons. ALL statements about whether ICE is/isn't deporting mostly criminals require qualification, and neither side is adding those qualifications.
It is less egregious for the Blue tribe, for the simple reason that the burden of proof is on the Red Tribe, the side advocating for and performing this action, to justify it.
And it doesn't help the Red Tribe that their spokespeople have been caught lying about Renee Good and Alex Pretti, calling them "domestic terrorists" which is BS, even if you maintain they were both actively interfering with immigration enforcement,
The Blue Tribe has lied _a very great deal_ about the protests as well, and continues to do so. Attorney General Keith Ellison has a lawsuit right now that has a number of claims that he *must* know are as completely false as everything the current admin said about Pretti. There are no clean hands here.
I think the Red Tribe's burden of proof is satisfied by criminal charges. After all, the law requires that they be deported merely for illegal presence, even without any criminality. All the Red Tribe aims to show is that a very large portion of the people being deported are criminals. They probably can't point at any specific case and say, "That one is definitely a criminal" prior to adjudication, but they probably can look at the whole and say, "The overwhelming majority of these people are criminals," in the aggregate. Innocent people do get charged with crimes (and we have tons of protections against criminal punishments in case that happens), but the truth is that it's pretty rare! And people being deported *aren't* being criminally punished!
So, no, if we're going with "burdens of proof" as the explanation here, I think it's the Blue Tribe's burden to show that the White House is deporting innocents. Instead of meeting that burden, they're just pretending everyone without a conviction is innocent as a dove, in the aggregate.
(EDIT: To be clear, my position remains that the Red and Blue tribes are about equally wrong here, not that the Blue Tribe is especially wrong. But you're saying that Red Tribe is uniquely wrong, so I'm pushing back on that.)
If illegals are deports simply for being illegals, that's one thing. But the constant line is that they are deporting "the worst of the worst", which is a higher bar to show than mere criminality. And "overwhelming majority" are criminals, even if only charged? C'mon, James.
I suspect you might be looking at reporting that is local to the Twin Cities that is not making national news (other than Fox/OAN/Newsmax). So we may not agree, this time.
And you could be right, and it would not change my views that Trump's immigration enforcement is a massive overreach, ignoring due process, and performatively and needlessly cruel. That opinion does not depend on specifics in your neck of the woods.
Nor do I intend to exonerate the Blue Tribe. Their often condescending downplaying of concerns about illegal immigration as "racist," was a big factor in the rise of Donald Trump.
Suppose I happen to overhear someone confess to (theft)/(murder)/(insert-crime-here). I happen to know him well enough to be reasonably confident he's telling the truth. On the way to reporting him to the police, I give you a call.
Is it proper for me to call him a (thief)/(murderer)? A criminal? After all, he hasn't been investigated by the police yet, let alone arrested or convicted!
I submit the answer is still "yes." It's still a just description, because there is an underlying reality of whether he has in fact committed a crime, and I am making a claim as to that underlying reality.
Of course, it's also just for you to point out that my claim could be incorrect and hasn't yet been tested in a court of law.
You can him him a murderer because you heard his confession. You have ndividual information. (Others might not BTW).
But when you scale up from individual cases, you have to rely on objective information, like criminal convictions.
The dividing line isn't "objective information". A whole lot of our sociological information comes from polls that're eventually rooted in individual testimonials just like my phone call to you.
Keep the links in the chain trustworthy enough, and there's still a point at which you can say "murderer". Or average it out across statistically-significant numbers of testimonies, and you can say "X% of this list (standard deviation Y) are most probably murderers."
Where formal criminal convictions come in, I believe, is that we have told our government that this sort of information isn't enough. They - unlike everyone else - need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Or at least, they do before imposing any criminal consequences. Public relations statements like this aren't quite the same thing. They're a disturbing slippery slope, but what else is new with our current officials?
You can maybe make a case that people who are repeatedly arrested and held but with charges dismissed, pled down or acquitted, are criminals. But I don't think that Trump/MAGA supporters are trying to make that case, not with their constant "worst of the worst" language.
And I have heard of cases where ICE has detained legal immigrants who had minor offenses years previously, like DUI or drug posession, to make their quotas.
I argue that someone is a criminal the instant that they commit the crime, whether or not they are ever noticed or convicted. However, unless you have firsthand knowledge (like your example), I recommend the phrase "alleged criminal", because that is a phrasing which gives the benefit of doubt and presumption of innocence.
The point you bring up about criminals versus convicted criminals is something addressed in this article I've linked previously: https://josephheath.substack.com/p/populism-fast-and-slow
4. Illiberalism. Populists have great difficulty respecting the rule of law. If one listens to the explanations that they offer for their actions, a great deal of this reflects a bias toward concreteness in their thinking. They think the purpose of the rules is to stop bad people from doing bad things, but since they themselves are good people trying to do good things, they cannot see why they should be constrained by the rules. They have enormous difficulty treating themselves and the other political parties symmetrically. (Americans are currently being subjected to a non-stop display of this.) Unfortunately, as those of us who teach liberal political philosophy know, there is an essential feat of abstraction at the foundation of all liberal principles. John Stuart Mill described it as a rejection of the the “logic of persecutors”: “that we may persecute others because we are right... but they must not persecute us because they are wrong.” The same feat of abstraction is involved in many other liberal protections. For example, populists often complain about lawyers “defending criminals.” It requires a cognitively decoupled representation to see that lawyers defend people who are accused of a crime, and even if many of these people are in fact criminals, one cannot describe them as such until after that determination has been made, through a procedure that requires legal representation. Similarly, populists find conflict of interest rules extremely difficult to follow, because these rules are typically designed to avoid putting people into situations in which their judgment might be improperly influenced. This hypothetical construct is unavailable to intuition, creating a strong desire to permit the behaviour so long as it is not actually bad.
EDIT: I am very careful in not imputing criminality to anyone accused, not because in many cases I am not personally convinced of the accused's guilt, but rather because of the aftermath of certain trials where an acquittal was entered despite widespread societal cries for a conviction. See, most notably, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Jian_Ghomeshi, which led to certain defences being banned. (As the Wiki article notes, the changes were proposed by a Senate report prior to the trial, but not enacted until after it.) It would not surprise me if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_Canada_sexual_assault_scandal#2025_criminal_trial leads to other changes that degrade the rights of the accused in such cases, again because of a widespread societal view that the acquittal was improper.
"Although the slogan "Believe the victim" has become popularized of late, it has no place in a criminal trial. To approach a trial with the assumption that the complainant is telling the truth is the equivalent of imposing a presumption of guilt on the person accused of sexual assault and then placing a burden on him to prove his innocence. That is antithetical to the fundamental principles of justice enshrined in our constitution and the values underlying our free and democratic society."
I don't think this is quite on-point, because I find it quite easy to hold all of the following propositions in my head at once:
(1) X committed a crime of which I have third-hand knowledge.
(2) Since my knowledge is third-hand, it is possible X did not commit that crime.
(3) I am confident in my third-hand information sources and so conclude it is highly likely X committed the crime.
(4) X is entitled to a full and robust defense before the law may punish him for the crime I'm pretty sure he committed.
(5) X is a criminal.
(6) X is not a convicted criminal.
(7) Lawyers who defend X against the charge are doing an essential job in our justice system, and should be criticized only for defending X too *feebly*, not too zealously.
(8) There are contexts where X's alleged-but-unproved criminality may legitimately be acted upon, even lacking a conviction. (For example, a police officer accused of running a murder-for-hire ring should have his badge and gun taken pending investigation; a police officer *charged* with running a murder-for-hire ring should be jailed pending trial.)
(9) Deportation statistics are one of those contexts.
What's being pointed out is that for some (not you, of course) a lot of these get conflated and/or disregarded. If you read the article, what you describe is what the author is discussing as an example of dual-process theory. You find it easy to hold all of those in your head at once and distinguish between them; a lot of people don't find that easy (and in some cases resent as intellectual elites those who show that they routinely do).
For instance, someone might accept the first three points. At this point, their intuitive cognitive process jumps to 5 and, on the basis of accepting that, vilify, reversing 7, any lawyer just satisfying their role under 4 and insist on 6 as a direct consequence of 5. It takes an active cognitive effort to switch to the analytical process and arrive at the list you presented, and a further effort to limit the range of acceptable consequences per point 8.
The issue is the cognitive friction between the intuitive and analytical processes. I've had to catch myself quite a bit with it recently, what with everything coming out of the Epstein files (yes, I think Donald probably touched children inappropriately, proceeding to 3; no, he hasn't been convicted of it, so my intuitive instinct, exacerbated by my dislike of the man for much more concrete reasons, to jump to 5 has to be suppressed; repeat for others named there, and try to focus my ire on stuff like Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's not even facing questioning as yet to my knowledge). The adage "where there's smoke, there's fire" is perfectly fine when it comes to literal fires, where the resources lost racing to the scene of a possible fire are far lower than what would be lost not responding to an actual fire, but it abstractly describes part of how the intuitive process applies in, say, criminal legal matters, where it becomes much more dangerous to make that leap.
For that matter, this runs in reverse as well, where someone might be so successful in ingraining the analytical process that it becomes intuitive, or at least cognitively indistinguishable from the intuitive process, to the point where they deny 8 altogether. (This is exacerbated by stories like https://www.reddit.com/r/policeuk/comments/lhr1fl/i_lost_my_job_for_a_case_that_ended_with_nfa_when/ where someone loses their job simply for having been arrested and put in jail, and thus unable to show up at work, despite no further action--NFA--being taken.)
I hope that helps explain why I consider your article, and Heath's, to be linked.
Thanks, James! The latest (apparent) fact I came across is that the chief federal law under discussion when people talk about illegal aliens is 8 U.S. Code 1325, "Improper entry by alien." "Improper" almost sounds like an error in etiquette. Maximum penalty for first offense is a fine, and/or no more than six months in jail. Basically, a misdemeanor. "Criminal" sounds like overkill as a description. I have been known to jaywalk, to cross the street without walking all the way to the corner, and to drive a touch over the speed limit. I could get fined for any of these. I'd be surprised if someone referred to me as having a criminal record. I also saw a post by an immigration attorney remarking that the offense has a five-year statute of limitations, which seems to mean that anyone who has been living here longer than that time cannot be charged with that offense. I'd be interested in whether any of this is mistaken.
By the way, I hope your cold is getting better. Just getting over one myself.
Hey, Richard! Always good to see you! I am FINALLY feeling better. I scheduled this post yesterday afternoon thinking I would spend the evening doing one last editing pass, but instead I passed out cold and slept for 12 hours. Happily, when I woke up, I found myself finally back to 95% of regular. Beats the flu!
I sort of spoke to this question a couple months ago, in ICE in the Twin Cities: An FAQ (https://decivitate.jamesjheaney.com/i/181463406/q-wait-is-entering-the-country-illegally-a-crime-i-thought-it-was-just-a-civil-offense-like-a-traffic-ticket):
Q: Wait, is entering the country illegally a crime? I thought it was just a civil offense, like a traffic ticket.
Illegal entry into the United States is a federal offense under 8 USC 1325, carrying a maximum prison sentence of up to six months on the first offense (higher on subsequent offenses). That makes it a Class B misdemeanor (18 USC 3559), which means it is alternatively punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 plus an additional civil penalty of up to $250. That’s quite a bit more than my worst traffic ticket.
But I'll expand on that somewhat here, to make the point more emphatically!
I don't know the law in WA, but here in Minnesota, jaywalking is a petty misdemeanor. It carries no possible prison term and a *technical* maximum fine of $300 (but the penalty statute is written to cover a huge sweeping range of traffic offenses and jaywalkers don't generally get anywhere close to the maximum).
On the other hand, here are some other Class B federal misdemeanors:
* Obstructing federal mail (18 USC 1701)
* Attempting to influence a juror (18 USC 1504)
* Breaching the Capitol, e.g. on January 6 (40 USC 5104 - many convicted under this statute)
* Storming the floor of the House of Representatives (same)
* Counterfeiting the Great Seal of the United States (18 USC 713)
* Simple assault (18 USC 113)
These aren't felonies. Illegal entry is not murder. But they also seem to me to be in a considerably different category from jaywalking, and those who commit them are properly called "criminals."
The five-year-statute of limitations you heard is true, but trivially true; the statute of limitations is five years for *all* federal crimes, unless otherwise specified. (18 USC 3282) Illegal entry is not otherwise specified. This is not a comment on the seriousness of the crime (other than to say it is an unexceptional crime), since even most felonies have the five-year statute of limitations, but rather, "to protect individuals from having to defend themselves against charges when the basic facts may have become obscured by the passage of time..." (CRS RL31253, which helpfully lists the exceptions).
Here's a question: is Sean Charles Dunn someone you would categorise as a criminal?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Sean_Dunn
In a bench trial, I think it likely he would have been found guilty of misdemeanor assault--a crime with which he was only charged after a grand jury refused to indict on a felony charge. But the trial jury acquitted him, in what was very plausibly a case of jury nullification.
(I'm not sure if I should ask your opinion on Roy Bryant and John William Milam, so while I bring that up here as what seems to me to have been plausibly another example of jury nullification, on a much more serious charge, comment on that only if you feel certain you can and should.)
This case is hard. In general, I would not object to someone categorizing Dunn as a criminal, nor to someone categorizing him as a non-criminal. If pressed to categorize him myself, I would put him in the non-criminal bucket, because it is plausible that the statute should be read the way the jury apparently read it and they acquitted him and I stand behind juries. But, before the acquittal, I would have more likely viewed him as a criminal.
It's not unheard of for me to have to switch categories. After his conviction on pedophilia allegations, I called Cardinal Pell a criminal pedophile (dunno if I did so on this blog or not, but I certainly did do that). Later, he was acquitted by a higher court, on the grounds that he could not possibly have done what he was accused of doing, and I found that reasoning persuasive, so I stopped calling him a criminal.
But then there are *really* nasty cases like the murderers of Emmett Till, whom you bring up here. I'm not sure whether I'm missing something, so I guess I'm not at all certain that I can or should comment on them specifically, but my understanding is that they were acquitted by a jury, but later confessed to the crime. In general, I think people who (plausibly) confess to crimes can be reasonably identified as criminals, at least in some contexts. Whether that applies in Bryant and Milam's case... I'm not sure, and I take your caution seriously, so I'll leave it alone for now.
Another case that comes to mind along those same lines is O.J. Simpson. Once again, I won't tell off anyone for calling him a criminal or non-criminal, since he was acquitted... but, if forced to decide, I think the weight of evidence plus his pseudo-confession plus the hinky circumstances of his acquittal add up to him being a criminal.
So I guess my rule is to defer to juries unless I have some quite strong reason to believe the jury got it wrong. Doesn't seem strong enough to me in Dunn's case, but does seem strong enough in Pell's and Simpson's case.
On Bryant and Milam, Wikipedia cites a source from 2009 still under copyright to note that some jurors felt that the men were guilty, just that life imprisonment (never mind the death penalty) was too harsh a punishment given that Till was black and the accused were white. Given that the case is a flashpoint in race relations in the US I feel I shouldn't say anything more either.
On Simpson, I think we part ways there, because I wouldn't be comfortable calling him a criminal in relation to the deaths of Brown Simpson and Goldman--whether I like it or not, he was acquitted by a criminal trial jury. (I am, however, wholly comfortable now with calling him a criminal in general, because in 2008 he was found guilty on twelve criminal charges related to a burglary.) So too with Dunn; he was acquitted, and so I don't think it's proper to refer to him as a criminal. But given that it could either be outright nullification, or a case of a statute admitting multiple plausible interpretations by a jury, I don't think I'd chastise someone for calling him a criminal in a colloquial sense (that said, I don't think the term "criminal" should be used in a colloquial sense at all).
By the same logic you give for George Pell, on the other hand, I'm quite comfortable with calling Donald Trump a (convicted) criminal at this time, but will cease to do so should his 2024 convictions be overturned on appeal.
As I said elsewhere, the Ghomeshi trial and its aftermath have led me to be extremely, perhaps overly, cautious when it comes to these things.
What happened to Ghomeshi anyway? The initial allegations made the news here (at least on NPR), but NPR got bad shortly thereafter and I stopped listening, so I never found out how it turned out.
I have no problem with people calling Donald Trump a criminal. I'm more annoyed with them calling him a President! :P
He was acquitted because the evidence at trial (it was a bench trial) did not support the claims beyond a reasonable doubt. Nonetheless he lost his job at the CBC and is now a podcaster.
Probably the most sensible take on the verdict that I saw was Neil Macdonald's: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ghomeshi-verdict-judge-neil-macdonald-1.3506958
The trial judge was very clear to note that he was not determining that the events did not happen as alleged: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/horkins-decision-ghomeshi-1.3505808#Decision (see paragraph 140).
(A dangerous trend I've seen as a counter to #MeToo and #BelieveVictims and such is people espousing the view that if a claim of sexual assault fails at trial, the complainant should be immediately found guilty of defamation--never mind that there's a large distance between failing the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard and actually uttering a falsehood. As an apocryphal Scottish defence attorney quipped, "Laddie, it's not my job to prove you innocent; it's my job to ensure your guilt has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.")
The big change made in 2018 was that the "rape shield" provision of the Criminal Code was expanded to include communications. Compare https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-276-20030101.html to https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-276-20181213.html and note particularly the addition of section (4). (The current version of the section, found at https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-276.html, removes the reference to Section 159, because that section, a partial prohibition of anal intercourse, was repealed in 2019.) Part of how the defence cast doubt on the complainants' credibility was by presenting past messages exchanged between Ghomeshi and the complainants. (That said, given what was added in 2018, between (4) and the new (2)(a), I'm not sure how much of an impact the changes would have had on Ghomeshi's trial specifically.)
As I said, the 2018 changes had been recommended in 2012. But they weren't enacted until after Ghomeshi's acquittal, and I at least am reasonably sure that the recommendations were acted upon because of public outrage at that verdict. I actually don't mind 276(4) itself, but I very much mind the final impetus for its enactment seemingly being a criminal acquittal that a lot of people thought was incorrect.
On the second point, meanwhile, after Yoon Suk Yeol tried to impose martial law in South Korea, blowback from voters was so extreme that some members of his own party turned on him and joined in voting to impeach (it required a two-thirds majority in the unicameral legislature and the President's party had just over a third of the seats), the Constitutional Court (which tries impeachments) ruled unanimously that the impeachment was valid, the ensuing snap Presidential election saw the main opposition party's candidate win handily, and then prosecutors sought the death penalty for Yoon.
Yoon ended up sentenced to life in prison.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx28y8xd1vjo
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/yoon-suk-yeol-life-sentence-9.7096907
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/19/south-koreas-ex-president-yoon-suk-yeol-found-guilty-of-insurrection
(There have also recently been the cases against Jair Bolsonaro and Marine Le Pen that have seen them barred from office for a time.)
I'm not sure why it's fruitful to categorize people as criminals or not. I'm still less sure why it's useful to draw the line at a certain level of misdemeanor that happens to put the group of people currently under discussion over the line, and yourself and the people you're friends with mostly not.
Most people have committed some kind of crime sometime in their life. For most of us, that crime was relatively harmless. Different kinds of people get prosecuted for harmless crimes differentially. Sometimes laws punish harmless action specifically in order to punish categories of people. Describing how lightly or severely the United States criminalizes immigrants doesn't make their actions more or less wrongful.
Comparing the average illegal entry to a Jan 6 insurrectionist is dirty pool--yes, most of those folks were charged only with misdemeanors, basically only for trespassing, rather than for an attempt to seize the United States government. That's more an illustration of the unseriousness of the charges brought against insurrectionists than of the seriousness of Class B misdemeanors.
Sure, the maximum sentences for Class B are well over your average speeding ticket. But speeding on federal land can be a Class B misdemeanor! Illegal camping is also a class B misdemeanor. It's more serious than Class C and less than Class A, all of which are less serious than any felony.
The maximum penalties exist, but it's not unusual for misdemeanors to be plea bargained into community service or other penalties with no misdemeanor conviction. (For some misdemeanors, like drug possession, there are specific legal offramps passed by Congress to allow clemency.)
Of course, there are lots of legally deportable folks who haven't committed any misdemeanor at all. For them, it *is* purely civil law. But for those who did commit a misdemeanor--sure, you've made the point that it's not the legal equivalent of a late library fee. But it's also below a threshold where dubbing people "criminals" is especially informative (if indeed it ever is).
We don't need to speculate! We have numbers from DHS for Trump's first year in office of his second term.
Less than 14% with violent criminal histories. Within that, it's mostly assault, and only 0.5% murder.
60% had convictions *or charges*--but that *includes* misdemeanor illegal entry charges, rather than charges in addition to those. Only half of that 60% definitely committed any crime beyond illegal entry. (We can't say for sure about the other half, but if they did do anything else, it wasn't serious enough to warrant coding in DHS' data.)
These of course are DHS' numbers, so if they have bias, it'll be toward categorizing people as criminals. More scrutinized numbers of criminality may or may not be lower.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-arrests-violent-criminal-records-trump-first-year/
Who's speculating? The figures used throughout this article are *also* from DHS numbers during the first year of this presidential term.
(This CBS story features useful new information -- specifically, a breakdown of particular charges, which I don't think we had before -- but it posted 6 hours after this article did. There's a 6% discrepancy between CBS's reported figure of 60% and FactCheck.org's analysis of DHS's data linked in this article, which gave a figure of 66%, but this is a fairly small discrepancy and there are a number of possible explanations for it.)
We know that "All other crimes" includes at least one case of identity theft and at least one case of distribution of child pornography, so I don't think they're coded into "all other" based on seriousness.
I do thank CBS for offering the best possible news peg for this article. Who knew everyone on Twitter would be arguing about which way to present this data is least misleading just a few hours after I posted?
I misread you as speaking about Trump's first term, and not having the data yet for 2025!
Good examples to show that "all other" isn't "not that bad" in all cases. I would bet money that the majority of "all other" *is* only the illegal entry charge, and the overwhelming majority is nothing a reasonable person would uproot someone's life over.
But let's be generous to the administration and assume that half of that 30% is something we'd all agree causes genuine harm. In that case we'd be looking at 45% total convictions or charges on something harmful, inclusive of the 14% violent offenders.
No matter what, we have 40% with no crime at all, and it's pretty reasonable to assume at least half-ish not creating any present problem.
It's also important to point out that ICE has been arresting people whose criminal histories are quite old. Deporting someone with a DUI conviction from fifteen years ago, with sentence long since served, is not the same as initiating removal for an assault committed on camera yesterday. *How much* is ICE doing this? Is it the exception or the rule? I don't know, and I bet we'd both like numbers on that.
if 40% of those deported by ICE have no other crime than illegal immigration, then it follows 60% do have some other crime, and therefore the claim that "ICE is mostly targeting criminals", even with the understanding that we're excluding illegal presence in the US from that context, is accurate. Most just means "more often than not", doesn't it?
For the record, I'm on team "remove every illegal immigrant yesterday", so I am aware I am biased, but that seems that your granted percentages agree with the administration's position.
Incorrect, Chuck! 40% have *no crime at all*.
Please pause for a moment on that one, because if you maintain the same opinion after revising that fact, your opinion might not be very susceptible to facts.
60% have *any* crime *or charges*, including a *charge* (without conviction) of illegal entry.
Only half of those, 30%, definitely have convictions *or charges* other than illegal entry.
That's not a good rate for saying that ICE is going after criminals.
Especially considering the flagrancy with which this administration makes unfounded criminal accusations. Or the frequency with which ICE is pursuing cases with illegal entry after many years beyond the statute of limitations. Or the fact that even sanctuary states hand over felons, so that the 14% who are violent offenders likely do not require ICE's militant tactics.
Can you explain why you think removing immigrants who have not committed any crime other than possibly illegal entry a decade or more ago is a good action? And why you think it's so good it's worth spending billions of dollars on?
Ah, it seems I misread the previous comments.
I do want to highlight a scenario which I believe supplies a significant number of those non-criminal arrests, although I do grant that 60/40 on this isn't ideal:
Suppose you are an ICE/CBP officer. Today's target is [some violent criminal here], who is illegally present in [insert sanctuary district here]. Despite your raid on the known residence of the target occurring at literally sunup, protestors and agitators are there complicating matters anyway when you arrive. Some of them obstruct you from arresting your target, although you get him anyway. However, you had to arrest 4 protesters due to the level of obstruction, and a person who also lived at that residence. You targeted 1 individual, arrested 6. However, because of the jurisdiction, if you hand the 4 protesters over to the local DA, they're more likely to commend them than prosecute them for obstructing ICE, so you simply drop the charges that you may have otherwise made. You now have 6 arrests, 1 deportation of a violent criminal (assuming that goes according to plan), and 4 or 5 (if the other resident doesn't have any other reason to be detained) folks who are summarily released with no crimes or charges ever being alleged. Would you consider this scenario a successful mission, even if it looks like a 17% conviction/arrest rate?
First, thanks for granting that you'd misread some comments and that the correctly interpreted numbers aren't ideal. Lots of us on both sides just want to dig our heels in a lot of the time.
I hadn't had the impression that protestors were included in these numbers at all! But if they are, despite how visible protestors want every arrest to be, I'm skeptical that the actual numbers would make that big of a dent in the ~400,000 total.
Conversely, we know that ICE sometimes arrests people who are here entirely legally. This used to be not terribly common, per James' portrayal, but in the last year, ICE has repeatedly violated court orders to release individuals or groups even after they have been determined to have been here legally. This habitual violation of court orders to incarcerate the innocent *is not normal.* It will likely be a long time before we have an accounting of how many innocent people have been held at length.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/us/politics/judge-minnesota-ice-court-orders.html
"Can you explain why you think removing immigrants who have not committed any crime other than possibly illegal entry a decade or more ago is a good action? And why you think it's so good it's worth spending billions of dollars on?" -- Yes:
1) Crime should not be allowed to benefit criminals
2) The benefit of illegal immigration is living in these United States
3) Therefore, any illegal immigrants found to be living in these United States should be immediately removed, and permanently barred from returning.
From where I sit, illegal immigration is a crime (morally) on par with wage theft or unjust taxation. That they've been benefitting from it for decades is actually reason, to me, to *prioritize* that person, not to ignore them.
Speaking of lies from official sources, how about what's come out about the shooting of Marimar Martinez?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/marimar-martinez-border-patrol-exum-body-cam-texts-released-rcna258549
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgfLHYjP-to
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/11/us/chicago-border-patrol-shooting-video-evidence
"Excellent service" by CBP, apparently.
EDIT: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/nekima-levy-armstrong-doctored-image-9.7074411
Or, speaking of the information environment being cracked, how about using AI tools to doctor an image of someone under arrest to make them appear to be crying?