Those ICE operations lasted about 3 days in late September. The final tally, according to official reports, was 104 arrests, including five ‘dangerous criminals’ with long rap sheets.
Markwayne Mullin highlighted those five on a long post on X. These folks were legitimate Bad People.
Problem is, however, that all of them were already in custody earlier this year, according to a story by a Wichita news station.
The news release highlighted five of those it said were arrested, but KSN’s research indicates that all of them were in federal custody earlier this year.
KSN reached out to ICE and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for confirmation on when the suspects were arrested. In its response, the U.S. Attorney’s Office did not say when the when the arrests happened.
“In my statement I only include information about the specific defendants that DHS officials have already made public,” U.S. Attorney Ryan Kriegshauser said. “Any additional information about those defendants or others detained must come from that agency.”
Markwayne Mullin held a press conference the other day, defending the ICE shooting of a man in New York, saying they didn’t know a five-year-old child was in the car. Mullin’s attitude was extremely aggressive, claiming that ICE is going after the “worst of the worst.” The problem with that is that only a tiny fraction of those being arrested by ICE have any criminal history. Many are just ordinary people who have committed the civil offense of overstaying a visa. (Note that some of the “worst of the worst” are native-born Americans not subject to deportation.)
In which a small town cop tries to convince himself he’s actually a decent guy, even while he accepts pieces of silver to deport people and rip apart their families.
I saw that article in the New York Times, where it was the cover story in the Sunday Magazine section. Trump claims to be deporting the “worst of the worst” but as this article shows, most of the ones being removed are just people who committed the civil offense of being undocumented. Is his town seeing citizens and permanent residents rushing in to do the jobs formerly done by the now deported? Are we better off now that we’re spending roughly $250 billion on this program?
Just 20 percent of all deportations in this period involved individuals with a criminal conviction. Of deportations of immigrants with two or more years of U.S. residence, a majority (71 percent) were of people who did not have a criminal conviction. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/publication/us-deportations-second-trump