It is now crystal clear that most people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have no criminal conviction. According to a Cato Institute analysis, 65% of people taken into custody have no criminal conviction and 93% have no violent conviction. These calculations are consistent with the horror stories we see daily, especially in California, where masked agents acting as kidnappers yank people from their jobs or immigration hearings not based on any danger but to meet a quota.
It is critically important that we examine how this administration tricked so many people into thinking we could possibly see a different result – that they would be deporting “scary” “dangerous” individuals instead of teachers, farm workers, and lifesaving caregivers. And then we must make sure no one falls for this garbage again, because this administration will keep using it with life-altering consequences.
The answer is clear: it followed the blueprint used by everyone who benefits from our broken criminal justice system. As someone with twenty years of experience working in it, first as a public defender and now on policy reform, I know it all too well. To keep our prisons full, perpetuate deeply entrenched racist sympathies, and ensure tough-on-crime politicians are elected, those with power create fear, make outlandish claims about the prevalence and the perpetrators of crime, and harness the media to repeat them. They take advantage of people’s economic and social anxiety, flashing up photos of disorder and chaos.
That strategy has worked for politicians for decades, regardless of party, and it largely worked on the immigration front until the Trump administration “administratively erred” by sending a dad to an El Salvador prison. We were primed to believe their lies and they knew it.
The administration’s math on undocumented people never added up. To arrest and deport 3,000 undocumented people a day, the Trump administration would always have to target people without criminal records, given that immigrants—documented or not—commit crimes at significantly lower rates than U.S. citizens. The administration and its allies told us otherwise, assuming it would work because it usually does.
Consider what happens when someone is accused of a crime, and especially, a Black or brown person. The police make an arrest, put out a press release declaring they have “apprehended” a dangerous criminal, often posting their rap sheet. Prosecutors then proudly announce an indictment, promising justice even if they haven’t reviewed the case in any meaningful way. They generally do not mention any of the evidence that points to a person’s innocence.
The media goes along with it. Turn on the 5:00 news and the lead story is about crime and a “criminal” with a mugshot flashing on the screen. The news doesn’t use a photo of the accused with their loved ones – that would breed some empathy and doubt – but a mug shot shows guilt. They don’t tell stories about the cases the prosecutor had to dismiss because they lacked evidence.
Put all of this together, and you have a public that thinks crime is everywhere even when it is not, and then willingly turns a blind eye to all kinds of atrocities that occur within that system.
The Trump administration has followed this playbook. They exploit a few high-profile crimes committed by undocumented people. ICE tweets photos of the people with convictions it has arrested. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem stood in front of a group of men at CECOT so that people could see them in the most dehumanizing way possible, and live-streamed arrests of “gang members.” Officials repeat, over and over again with their words and images, that undocumented people are criminals and the media televises it.
Similarly, now that a court has ordered the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia amidst public outrage, Attorney General Pam Bondi has suddenly secured an indictment accusing him of human trafficking, a specious claim at best considering they never once said it before. But she proudly announced it in a press conference hoping it would be reported and believed.
It is terrifying to think that many of these tactics worked at first, especially now that we know the results. Had the Trump administration not so dramatically overplayed its hand, violating court orders, sending people to foreign camps without even a hearing, and using masked agents to grab people off the streets and from work while people recorded it, we might not see much of a public outcry. With just a slightly more tempered plan, this administration could have gotten away with its monstrous cruelty without much challenge, and may still with the aid of the Supreme Court.
Unless we learn our lesson and stop falling for this cynical and dangerous posturing, we are going to see this behavior repeated. This administration uses this playbook to target protestors, women who have had abortions, and Black and brown people who it wants to portray as “dangerous” to garner support for a police state. No one will be protected by the law, due process, or morality. That’s not a reality we want to experience.
Jessica Brand is executive director of the Wren Collective.