ICE Ups Its Bullshit: Claims Assaults Are Up 500% After Being Questioned About Its 413% Figure
from the just-making-shit-up dept
Using statistics to lie is so commonplace, it’s hardly worth noting. But the DHS can’t even be bothered to use statistics to lie. Instead, it just repeats the lie and uses this lie to engage in circular reasoning.
Washington Post columnist Philip Bump angered ICE by asking a simple question: why are so many ICE agents wearing masks when engaging in raids? The only answer is the truth: they’re trying to dodge accountability for their actions. If they can’t be seen, they can’t be named, shamed, or sued.
Acting ICE director Todd Lyons was granted space in the Washington Post to print a rebuttal to Bump’s column. He claimed ICE agents were covering up to protect themselves against threats to them and their families. To support his claim, he offered this startling stat from the DHS:
Since President Donald Trump returned to office, ICE officers have seen a staggering 413 percent increase in assaults against them.
Lyons was kind enough to link the source of this statistic. But that didn’t help anything, because the link led to nothing more than current DHS frontmouth Tricia McLaughlin saying this exact same thing without offering any statistical support for her claim:
“Even during National Police Week, the media, members of Congress, and sanctuary politicians have demonized ICE and CBP officers who bravely serve their country,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “Attacks and smears against ICE have resulted in officers facing a 413% increase in assaults. We are setting the facts straight and reassuring America that President Trump and Secretary Noem will continue to support ICE and CBP in their efforts to make America safe again.
The statistic is presented without support or context. Even given the expansive definition of the word “assault,” which can mean anything from actual physical assault to simply bumping into an officer to making the mistake of receiving a beating from an ICE agent, the stat is meaningless. There’s no starting point and no previous number to compare it to.
Philip Bump decided to dig into this mysterious figure after Lyons’ response in the op-ed pages, hoping to find an origin for this “413% increase in assaults” claim. What he found out using the government’s own statistics is that this figure is completely made up.
Here I will point out that Customs and Border Protection offers monthly data on the number of assaults on its officers. The year-to-date total is 20 percent lower than it was in 2024.
In fact, the data shows assaults on CBP officers have been steadily dropping since 2022. If the current trend in assaults remains steady, 2025 will end with fewer assaults than in 2024 (438 vs 457).
Granted, CBP isn’t ICE. But since ICE won’t actually release assault numbers, it will do for a rough comparison. (In fact, its whole stats section — even the stuff it wants the public to know — is littered with 502 errors.)
Information on assaults on ICE officers is nearly nonexistent, as Bump discovered:
I was able to find Justice Department and DHS news releases documenting a number of assaults against ICE officers since January — assaults targeting 12 individuals. Five of them were targeted at ICE facilities in California and Texas. An ICE news release also mentioned assaults during a sweep in Nebraska, though the announcement blurred accusations of “threatening to assault” and “assaulting.” It also didn’t include a total number of officers targeted.
For context, ICE announced in April that it had conducted 66,463 arrests since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.
ICE refused to respond to Bump’s requests for data supporting the 413% increase in assaults claim. Then it decided to double-down, mere hours after Bump’s second column went live.
A DHS press release, sent out on June 20, makes an even more incredible claim about assaults on ICE officers:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released new statistics on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facing a 500% increase in assaults against them while carrying out immigration enforcement operations.
Oh, wow! There’s a link in that statement! Let’s just click on it and continue on to the statistical source of this new claim… oh wait:
Jesus Fucking Christ.
I’ll just quote the pop-up directly so you can perform your spit-take at your leisure:
You are now leaving the Department of Homeland Security’s website and headed towards:
Are you sure you want to proceed?
That’s right. The official government site is directing readers to view this “statistic” at far-right “news” outlet Breitbart. If you dare to click through, you still won’t find any actual statistics. You’ll just find the same claim repeated by the DHS spokesperson, this time surrounded by Breitbart branding.
“Today, the Department of Homeland Security released new data revealing that ICE law enforcement is now facing a 500% increase in assaults while carrying out enforcement operations,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Breitbart News.
But there is no “new data.” There’s only a new number — one still disconnected from anything that resembles “data.” There’s no link to data in the Breitbart article. And there’s no link to any data contained anywhere on either the DHS or ICE websites that would support this completely fabricated claim the DHS continues to pretend is based in reality.
This is a post-truth administration. It can’t even be bothered to manipulate data to make it appear as though its bullshit has a factual basis. Instead, it just says stuff and when anyone asks questions, it refuses to answer them, choosing instead to speak to pro-Trump publications that will print any stupid bullshit that happens to fall out of administration officials’ mouths.
ICE is now operating in a way it never has before. It’s performing broad daylight raids utilizing officers dressed like armed kidnappers. If there’s an increase in assaults, it might roughly track with the increase in raids. But there’s absolutely no factual basis for these absolute lies being told by DHS and ICE officials. And there’s still no justification for ICE’s rebranding as a Gestapo-esque force completely devoid of identification or accountability.
Filed Under: bullshit, dhs, ice, mass deportation, tricia mclaughlin
Comments on “ICE Ups Its Bullshit: Claims Assaults Are Up 500% After Being Questioned About Its 413% Figure”
It’s not “assault” because ICE agents aren’t human.
You may think the numbers are wrong, but it’s actually up 600%.
Would you believe 300%?
How about raised voices and a harsh glare?
I live walking distance from George Floyd Square and I keep hearing how I am constantly murdered while a sharia-adherent communist cabal of rulers burns the city every other day to punish us for not having enough abortions.
At some point can we take the toys away from the obvious fucking emotional toddlers? Remember when we had steady and measured leadership, even if disagreeable?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Fuck these Nazis.
We are clearly a nation of slackers. Those numbers should be more like 30,000%.
Kinda a strawman argument. DHS wants you to accept that a certain number of assaults on ICE justifies their mask-wearing.
If you apply critical thinking to the matter, the only assaults that are relevant are ones that wouldn’t have occurred if the ICE agent(s) had been masked. I wouldn’t be surprised if masking ICE agents actually increases the number of assaults that they experience overall.
I can absolutely believe assaults are up 500%. Just remember kids: When you’re lying face down on the pavement with your hands behind your back, if you breathe too quickly or too slowly or move a single muscle in any way or don’t move a muscle immediately on command or do move on command but don’t follow the correct commands that is assault.
By this logic, the more kidnappings ICE engages in the more assaults they will fall victim to. Honestly, a mere 500% increase sounds like a real lowball.
George Orwell would be proud to know that the people who are supposed to be protecting us are more dishonest than the people they are supposed to protect us from. Not surprising that the guy at the top of the heap is a convicted felon who has never told the truth in his life. It’s past disgusting, however, when the “Justice” department is paying off witnesses to convict an innocent person whom they were forced to return from an unlawful deportation (Khalil). And what RFK Jr. is doing is criminal.
'I got their blood on my clothes, I've been assaulted!'
The only way I could believe that ‘assaults’ against the modern day gestapo was up any appreciable amount is if you changed the definition of assault such that hitting someone else means that you were assaulted, and in that case 500% seems way low.
Re:
Maybe they’re counting ‘verbal assaults’ as in ‘Fuck you ICE Nazi scum!’ counts as at least 3 assaults (one for the ‘fuck you’, one for the Nazi adjective, and another for referring to said ICE Nazis as ‘scum.’)
It fits right in with their perpetual victim complex, as well as the well-known intense fragility of those ‘brave’ men & women in ICE.
Well, if 2 + 2 = 5, then 400% = 500%.
Seems coherent so far.
Doesn't this kind of accep their premise?
Even if assaults on ICE agents were way up, it would still be unacceptable for them to operate masked.
If you spend a bunch of time debunking their bogus statistics, you invite people to forget that their statistics don’t matter to begin with.
It doesn't fucking matter whether "assaults" are up 500%
There is a price tag for operating a government that derives its justification from protecting the freedom of its constituents.
This price tag is the inconvenience of operating lawfully and transparently. Masked officers in unmarked vehicles are not providing for either.
The doctrine that the convenience or efficiency of government operations trumps the rights and interests of its constituents has a name: it is called fascism. That is not some kind of invective; it is the proper definition.
A lack of being able to hold the government accountable for its operations is an inherent component that renders any constitutional guarantees ineffective.
For that reason fascism is fundamentally incompatible with operating a constitutional republic.
Essentially the Trump government is openly telling the populace that they have abolished the constitutional republic of the United States and have replaced it with fascism, and that this is a valid and desirable goal in order to make government more effective as well as unaccountable.
This deserves pointing out whenever the Trumpists in the government and their impotent apologists in Senate and House reply to “you are breaking the law” with another “but this makes things easier for us” evasion.
Well, you know…
Videoing their illegal “arrests” is ‘assault’.
Demanding they provide proper identification is ‘assault’.
Demanding to see valid judicial warrants is ‘assault’.
Denying ICE entry to schools, hospitals, stadiums or courtrooms is ‘assault’.
Even calling them fascists is ‘assault’.
ICE agents operate masked, in plain clothes, and without arrest warrants, so of course people believe they’re abducting others off the street and move in to intervene, which counts as self-defense rather than assault, and let’s not forget the fact that California has case law that is tantamount to a stand your ground law.
Sorry, I initially read that as ‘frothmouth.’
…Actually, nah; I’m not sorry at all. Has anyone considered maga is just some weird new strain of rabies?