From A Certain Point of View
Is ICE mostly deporting criminals? A quick hit.
The information environment in the Twin Cities is completely cracked, and has been for weeks. You can’t trust anything the federal government says, you can’t trust anything the protesters say, and you can’t trust anything local officials say. They’re all lying, constantly, and it takes days to sort out the truth about anything.
My local Target has faced two sit-in protests over a racist incident at a different Target that never actually happened. The Department of Homeland Security officially published a verifiably false set of claims about a man the Border Patrol had just gunned down in the street, in a transparent attempt to libel him for political gain. A woman who took her kids to a declared riot (and thereby got them tear-gassed and hospitalized) spent a week pretending she’d been trapped in the riot by accident before Internet weirdos proved she was lying.1 (By then, she’d raked in a handsome take on GoFundMe.)
As I wrote a few weeks ago:
I keep talking about the possibility of some future civil war, but the truth is that civil war is a spectrum, and we are already on it. We’ve been in a low-grade civil war since at least 2020. The two rival tribes that occupy the United States are vast, rich, well-organized, and well-armed. Both of them are doing everything in their power to get you to pick a side—their side. When this war gets hot, they are going to need you to kill the people on the other side, and they are trying to prepare you for that. The tribes can’t let killings like Babbitt’s or Good’s be mere tragic exercises in stupidity; they must be made into martyrdoms or domestic terrorism. If the truth gets in the way of that, the truth will have to go. What looks like truth-telling becomes recruitment.
All three incidents I just described (and more besides) happened after I wrote those words. I can write about the lies for hours. Indeed, in correspondence with local friends and acquaintances, trying to sort out true from false, I’ve done just that.
However, lies are not the only way tribes spread propaganda. On the contrary, lies are one of the weaker tools in their toolbox. Of course, the tribes have many ways to keep their followers from learning the truth. Even if they learn the truth, tribesmen have a strong bias against accepting the truth, because it would create cognitive dissonance.2 If it were not so, the tribes could not use lies at all! However, on the rare occasion that a lie is exposed, it can do major damage to a tribesman’s faith in the tribe. Both tribes greatly prefer to use the truth, where available. It’s much easier to convince people you’re right when you are, in fact, right.
However, truth is often complicated. Tribal narratives can rarely afford complexity.
So here’s a question for you: Is ICE mostly arresting criminals?
(Prior to reading anything I have to say about it, what do you think is the correct answer to this question?)
While Americans are pretty divided on whether to deport all illegal immigrants, there is an overwhelming consensus that criminal illegal immigrants should be swiftly shown the door.3 Mr. Trump spent much of his campaign talking up the threat of specifically criminal aliens and promising to focus his attention, first and foremost, on the criminals. So this question matters a lot, politically: is ICE living up to that commitment to mostly arrest criminals?
One true answer to this question is No. The vast majority of illegal immigrants arrested in the last twelve months are not criminals. In fact, in Trump’s first year, only 36% of those arrested were criminals. This is perfectly true.
Another true answer is Yes. The vast majority of illegal immigrants arrested in the last twelve months are criminals. In fact, in Trump’s first year, fully 66% of those arrested were criminals. This is also perfectly true.
How can these contradictory claims both be true?
About a third of the people arrested in Trump’s first year had pending criminal charges, but had not yet been convicted. If you count them as criminals, then the 66% figure is correct and the vast majority of arrestees are criminals. If you don’t, then the 36% figure is correct and the vast majority aren’t.
One can imagine a series of quick retorts between the tribes about which statistic is more appropriate:
BLUE: People with pending charges aren’t criminals! They’re innocent until proven guilty!
RED: In federal criminal court, 91% of those charged are convicted, and many of the remainder are definitely criminals but get off on technicalities.
BLUE: And a lot of those who plead guilty are railroaded by our corrupt plea-bargaining system.
RED: Even if you just look at cases that went to trial—which are likely to include many of the best cases for defendants—the government still wins convictions 82% of the time.
BLUE: That’s federal. State conviction rates are lower.
RED: Probably, but probably not much lower, and good luck finding the data to back up an intuition. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of people with pending criminal charges are going to end up convicted, an even larger share of them are guilty, and you know it.
BLUE: I don’t know anything until due process is done, and neither do you.
RED: These are persons unlawfully present in the United States. The process due them, by law, is verification of their status followed by deportation. The end.
BLUE: So you don’t care that, by your own admission, your “66% criminal” stat is almost certainly an exaggeration?
RED: At most, a slight exaggeration—a lot less than the wild under-exaggeration you commit by treating every kiddie diddler arrested on clear evidence as a perfect innocent until the State spends God-knows-what convicting them. It’s absolutely true that a majority of those arrested are criminals!
BLUE: Hold on, what “clear evidence”? You hyperlinked a specific story there, the case of Daniel Alejandro Torrealba Mendez, and I happen to know there’s no public arrest record or evidentiary court filings in that case!
RED: …Yet.
BLUE: So when you said clear evidence, you were making it up?
RED: I’ll tell you what. I’ll bet you $1,000, right now, that, whenever the evidence in that case does come out, your own mother will agree he did it.
BLUE: I don’t gamble, especially not with the justice system.
RED: Sure. You’d rather gamble with public safety, which is why Gregori Arias is dead.
BLUE: This isn’t fair. You’ve had four hyperlinks and I’ve had none. The author’s stacking the deck.
JAMES: Please don’t drag me into this! I’m trying to find a good link for you on the plea-bargaining point, but I haven’t looked at plea-bargain abuse in years. Will my Official Authorial Endorsement make up for it?4 I’ll also let you take an extra turn, Blue.
BLUE: Fine. What most Americans are really interested in when they ask about “criminal illegal aliens” is serious crimes—violent crimes. You know, the “Worst of the Worst” (which ICE had to plump up with people Minnesota had already imprisoned), not graffiti and shoplifting. But only a small fraction of ICE arrests—7% over most of last year!—were of violent criminals!5 Moreover, that fraction is falling as ICE has to cast larger and larger nets to make its quotas! Your argument is already unjustified, but it could fall apart completely in six months!
RED: I’m not going to discuss future hypotheticals while you’re moving the goalposts here and now. We started out agreeing that criminal aliens were the category of interest, not some bespoke artisanal subset of criminal aliens that happens to interest you. The same report shows that the most common non-violent conviction was for DUI, which is a serious offense in my book! So’s “non-violent” identity theft. So’s “non-violent” distribution of child pornography. These are not good guys you’re defending!
BLUE: You cannot know that! You can point out this or that bad case but you cannot make systematic claims about all cases, especially in this degraded information environment, without independent jury review! In America, we don’t call people “criminals” until convicted by a jury of their peers!
RED: Our beloved author waited four days after George Floyd’s killing to start calling it a “murder.” He switched terminology on the basis of Hennepin County’s criminal charge—not a conviction, which took another year. Your Blue tribe criticized him for not calling it a murder quickly enough. English has the phrase “convicted criminal,” distinct from “criminal,” because we know there are criminals who haven’t been convicted.
BLUE: Maybe our beloved author called Floyd’s death a “murder” as soon as it was charged, but I don’t think he actually called Chauvin a “murderer” until conviction.
JAMES: Guys, please, stop bringing me into this. Blue could be right, but I honestly don’t remember. In fact, I think we’ve got about all we can from you two, so I’m going to call it there.
RED & BLUE: Spineless chicken!
What seems like a very simple yes-or-no question—Is ICE mostly deporting criminals?—turns out to be a fairly thorny one, with boundaries that can be reasonably contested to reach opposite conclusions. Both tribes accurately claim that the truth is on their side.
More importantly, both tribes truly believe the truth is on their side.6
Most dangerously, many tribesmen aren’t even aware of the argument from the other side, and believe that the other side is flagrantly lying. (Their fellow tribesmen aren’t inclined to correct that impression.)
As a result, we have two very different pictures of U.S. deportations: one version where most people getting swept up and kicked out are criminals who pose a threat to public safety, and another where most people getting swept up and kicked out are peaceable family men who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Neither is a lie. Both have considerable truth to them.
I’m supposed to have a conclusion here to help you apply these principles broadly in your life, but this is a “Quick Hit”7 and I’m on day three of a head cold, so, I guess, just try to remember that, even when you do perform the hard work of sifting through the avalanche of lies to acquire a few true facts, your lens isn’t necessarily unequivocally the only true lens through which to view them.
This is hard. I’m going to go lie down.8
In a strange twist, she also turned out to be a convict. Initially indicted for first-degree murder after an armed robbery gone bad, she pled down to “aiding an offender after the fact.” Sentenced to four years, which would have expired in June 2025, she served 28 days. This is largely irrelevant to the tear-gas incident, since she would have been out anyway, but it is just an odd trivia fact about the case.
This sentence is practically an invitation to commenters to suggest all the ways in which I, too am victim to this, and I may as well lean into it: go ahead, come at me, I know I’m not exempt from cognitive bias.
In this context, a “criminal illegal immigrant” is someone illegally present in the United States who has committed a crime other than the federal crime of illegally entering the United States. Strictly speaking, the answer to our question is Yes, well over 90% of the people ICE arrests are criminals, because they committed the crime of illegal entry, but this is only trivially true, and is not what people ordinarily mean by “criminal illegal immigrants.” They ordinarily want to know whether the alien has committed some crime in addition to illegal entry.
These people may want to deport the alien either way—mass deportation has always been fairly popular in the polls, at least up until it became a daily reality—but it makes a moral difference for a lot of people whether the alien came here illegally and then made a blameless life for himself, or if he came here illegally and then committed crimes.
OFFICIAL AUTHORIAL ENDORSEMENT: Blue is definitely correct that our plea-bargaining system railroads people. It’s hard to quantify how many actually innocent people end up convicted as a result, but that is very much a thing.
BLUE: And then I suddenly get three links in one reply? Guilty conscience much, James?
JAMES: Your earlier arguments were more about abstract principles! I can’t help that!
Only on De Civitate is a “Quick Hit” 2,000 words long with 6 footnotes. Only 6!
UPDATE: I did indeed go lie down after finishing this, and promptly fell asleep for two hours, the gentle breeze of the humidifier falling on my cheeks. I then held this piece back for a couple days until I could reread it with less liquid flowing from my nose and mouth. It holds up, although I wish I’d taken the time to sprinkle in some more source links. Oh, well, Quick Hit, out it goes.
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.
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).