One key rule in piercing the mainstream media's narrative management: Always read past the jump.
Today's case in point comes from the Washington Post, where the massive enforcement of immigration law has become one of Donald Trump's most prominent successes. Trump won the election in large part because of the Biden-Harris border crisis and its secondary effects on crime, housing costs, and the costs of social safety-net support for millions of illegal aliens. Voters wanted the millions of illegals that flooded the United States ejected, and elected the candidate who promised to do just that.
And as it turns out, Trump has succeeded beyond anyone's estimation. Not only has the administration ramped up arrests and deportations, but it has also successfully incentivized self-deportations and ended the incentives for more illegal entries and visa overstays. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has succeeded so well that they have expanded its focus beyond the initial priority of expelling illegal aliens with criminal records.
The Post attempts to make that success into a scandal:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is detaining more immigrants who do not have a criminal record than at any other point since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, according to newly released government data.
Trump officials have consistently stated that their goal is to keep Americans safe by targeting enforcement against “the worst of the worst” — undocumented immigrants who have committed violent crimes or repeated offenses. The new data, however, shows that more than half of all the people ICE arrested in July did not have a criminal record, the highest single-month total since January 2025.
The shift toward targeting more people with civil immigration violations but no criminal charges has helped ICE achieve record numbers of overall arrests. In all, federal authorities detained more than 49,000 migrants in July, the highest total during Trump’s second administration, according to a Washington Post analysis of government data. ...
Immigration lawyers and analysts said the numbers reflect the Department of Homeland Security’s evolving approach as officials rush to fulfill Trump’s goals for the mass deportation campaign and more people lose protections shielding them from removal. The administration has canceled temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who fled dangerous countries and also arrested people with pending asylum claims and green-card applications who were not previously a target for enforcement.
And ... so? Trump has promised that ICE would prioritize the arrest and deportation of illegals who commit crimes in the US. That doesn't restrict enforcement to solely those who fall into that category. Moreover, every alien in the US illegally has committed a crime in that status alone. The Post attempts to get around that by calling it a civil violation, but that only applies to their failure to depart once ordered to do so (8 USC 1324d). Even if that's a civil violation, it still requires the alien to be deported and potentially to pay fines of $500 per day. All "civil violation" means in this context is that there is no jail time associated with 8 USC 1324d.
However, that applies to their current status, not how they got into the US in the first place. Federal law (8 USC 1325) makes illegal entry a misdemeanor, not just a "civil violation," with a potential penalty of six months in detention and eventual deportation. If they have been deported and re-enter illegally, it becomes a felony (8 USC 1326). Visa overstays fall under 8 USC 1182, and while those are technically civil violations, it's in the same context as the status above in that no jail time is authorized. The overstays are still subject to deportation, however, and to penalties that would prevent their re-entry to the United States.
In fact, as we approach the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it's worth recalling that several of al-Qaeda's hijackers were able to conduct that terror attack because we didn't enforce visa expirations. The 9/11 Commission urged Congress to overhaul the visa system to strictly enforce visa expirations and to remove aliens who committed such "civil violations." It's taken this long to finally address this gaping hole in national security that contributed to the mass murder of nearly three thousand American citizens and residents. If Trump is enthusiastic enough about his mandate to finally address this security risk along with the border-control issues and massive flood of illegals during the Biden Regency, that's a feature rather than a bug.
As I wrote above, though, the Post hides the full context of the data. Readers have to get past a misleading headline ("How ICE is arresting soaring numbers of immigrants with no criminal record") and thirteen paragraphs of alarmist reportage before the numbers actually show that the Trump administration still mainly focuses on their expressed priority:
ICE has arrested more than half a million people since Trump returned to office, and nearly 40 percent do not have a criminal record. As of Aug. 6, ICE had detained more people without a criminal record this year than in all of 2025. The administration has also already exceeded the number of people ICE detained during all of President Joe Biden’s presidency, as well as Trump’s first term and President Barack Obama’s last.
Translation: Nearly two-thirds of the record number of illegal immigrants arrested have criminal records separate from the illegality of their presence in the US. And that is almost two-thirds of a record number of detainees by ICE. Shouldn't that have been the headline, rather than applying "record numbers" only to the minority of arrests involving people with no separate criminal record?
The American public certainly thinks so. The latest iteration of the Harvard-Harris CAPS poll still shows massive support for deporting illegal aliens with criminal records (79/21, 67% support among Dem voters), but also majority support for deporting all illegal aliens (55/45, 35% among Dems, 52% among independents). The phrase "I voted for this" has become a humorous jab, but it's literally true in this context. Not only did people vote for Trump to accomplish this, their support for strict enforcement of immigration law has barely budged in 18 months since he took office. Here's the Harvard-Harris CAPS results from February 2025:
The Harvard-Harris CAPS survey didn't start asking the question of deporting all immigrants here illegally until September of last year. That arose after initial media coverage of mass arrests, but the consensus on this question has remained constant. It's 55/45 as of last month, and in September 2025, it was 56/44.
Donald Trump is giving voters exactly what they wanted, and is doing so with a high degree of success. The WaPo's attempt to mislead readers on the numbers will do nothing to dent the enthusiasm of voters who finally got fed up with open-borders policies and lies about the impossibility of enforcement.
