from the just-making-shit-up dept
Utilizing statistics to lie is so commonplace, it’s hardly price noting. However the DHS can’t even be bothered to make use of statistics to lie. As a substitute, it simply repeats the lie and makes use of this lie to interact in round reasoning.
Washington Put up columnist Philip Bump angered ICE by asking a easy query: why are so many ICE brokers sporting masks when participating in raids? The one reply is the reality: they’re making an attempt to dodge accountability for his or her actions. If they’ll’t be seen, they’ll’t be named, shamed, or sued.
Appearing ICE director Todd Lyons was granted house within the Washington Put up to print a rebuttal to Bump’s column. He claimed ICE brokers have been protecting as much as defend themselves towards threats to them and their households. To assist his declare, he provided this startling stat from the DHS:
Since President Donald Trump returned to workplace, ICE officers have seen a staggering 413 % enhance in assaults towards them.
Lyons was type sufficient to hyperlink the supply of this statistic. However that didn’t assist something, as a result of the hyperlink led to nothing greater than present DHS frontmouth Tricia McLaughlin saying this very same factor with out providing any statistical assist for her declare:
“Even throughout Nationwide Police Week, the media, members of Congress, and sanctuary politicians have demonized ICE and CBP officers who bravely serve their nation,” stated Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “Assaults and smears towards ICE have resulted in officers dealing with a 413% enhance in assaults. We’re setting the info straight and reassuring America that President Trump and Secretary Noem will proceed to assist ICE and CBP of their efforts to make America protected once more.
The statistic is offered with out assist or context. Even given the expansive definition of the phrase “assault,” which may imply something from precise bodily assault to easily bumping into an officer to creating the error of receiving a beating from an ICE agent, the stat is meaningless. There’s no place to begin and no earlier quantity to check it to.
Philip Bump determined to dig into this mysterious determine after Lyons’ response within the op-ed pages, hoping to seek out an origin for this “413% enhance in assaults” declare. What he discovered utilizing the authorities’s personal statistics is that this determine is totally made up.
Right here I’ll level out that Customs and Border Safety affords month-to-month information on the variety of assaults on its officers. The year-to-date complete is 20 % decrease than it was in 2024.
In reality, the info exhibits assaults on CBP officers have been steadily dropping since 2022. If the present development in assaults stays regular, 2025 will finish with fewer assaults than in 2024 (438 vs 457).
Granted, CBP isn’t ICE. However since ICE gained’t really launch assault numbers, it’ll do for a tough comparability. (In reality, its entire stats part — even the stuff it desires the general public to know — is suffering from 502 errors.)
Info on assaults on ICE officers is almost nonexistent, as Bump found:
I used to be capable of finding Justice Division and DHS information releases documenting quite a lot of assaults towards ICE officers since January — assaults concentrating on 12 people. 5 of them have been focused at ICE amenities in California and Texas. An ICE information launch additionally talked about assaults throughout a sweep in Nebraska, although the announcement blurred accusations of “threatening to assault” and “assaulting.” It additionally didn’t embrace a complete variety of officers focused.
For context, ICE introduced in April that it had carried out 66,463 arrests since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.
ICE refused to reply to Bump’s requests for information supporting the 413% enhance in assaults declare. Then it determined to double-down, mere hours after Bump’s second column went stay.
A DHS press launch, despatched out on June 20, makes an much more unimaginable declare about assaults on ICE officers:
The Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) launched new statistics on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) dealing with a 500% enhance in assaults towards them whereas finishing up immigration enforcement operations.
Oh, wow! There’s a hyperlink in that assertion! Let’s simply click on on it and proceed on to the statistical supply of this new declare… oh wait:
Jesus Fucking Christ.
I’ll simply quote the pop-up instantly so you may carry out your spit-take at your leisure:
You at the moment are leaving the Division of Homeland Safety’s web site and headed in direction of:
Are you positive you wish to proceed?
That’s proper. The official authorities web site is directing readers to view this “statistic” at far-right “information” outlet Breitbart. Should you dare to click on via, you continue to gained’t discover any precise statistics. You’ll simply discover the identical declare repeated by the DHS spokesperson, this time surrounded by Breitbart branding.
“Right this moment, the Division of Homeland Safety launched new information revealing that ICE regulation enforcement is now dealing with a 500% enhance in assaults whereas finishing up enforcement operations,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin informed Breitbart Information.
However there is no such thing as a “new information.” There’s solely a brand new quantity — one nonetheless disconnected from something that resembles “information.” There’s no hyperlink to information within the Breitbart article. And there’s no hyperlink to any information contained wherever on both the DHS or ICE web sites that might assist this fully fabricated declare the DHS continues to fake is predicated in actuality.
It is a post-truth administration. It might probably’t even be bothered to govern information to make it seem as if its bullshit has a factual foundation. As a substitute, it simply says stuff and when anybody asks questions, it refuses to reply them, selecting as an alternative to talk to pro-Trump publications that may print any silly bullshit that occurs to fall out of administration officers’ mouths.
ICE is now working in a manner it by no means has earlier than. It’s performing broad daylight raids using officers dressed like armed kidnappers. If there’s a rise in assaults, it’d roughly observe with the rise in raids. However there’s completely no factual foundation for these absolute lies being informed by DHS and ICE officers. And there’s nonetheless no justification for ICE’s rebranding as a Gestapo-esque power fully devoid of identification or accountability.
Filed Underneath: bullshit, dhs, ice, mass deportation, tricia mclaughlin
