PBS’ Amna Nawaz tried.

When interviewing Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Nawaz asked for clarification on Trump’s flipflop of whether or not to exempt from arrest undocumented agricultural and hospitality workers.  McLaughlin responded that 75% of ICE arrests have been of violent criminals, dismissing as untrustworthy a CNN report that showed otherwise.  What’s odd is that that report featured ICE data showing that less than 10% of arrests during fiscal year 2025 were of criminals convicted of any crime, violent or otherwise.   

Considered alongside other claims from Trump administration officials, McLaughlin’s exchange with Nawaz is part of a pattern.  Put more succinctly, confusing the public has become central to how key players in the government legitimize the administration’s controversial mass deportation program.  Finding clarity on the numbers and pointing to who really stands to gain from rounding up scores of people, reveals a concerted effort to have taxpayers bankroll the privatization of public security to benefit a handful of Trump allies.

Another stat worth examining – that 75% of ICE arrests have been of violent criminals.  Where did McLaughlin get that from?

And it’s not just McLaughlin who’s invoked it.  

Secretary Noem, in an Instagram post where she holds up images of individual migrants who she says committed crimes like assault and robbery, captions the video with “75% of the illegal alien arrests under the Trump administration have been charged with or convicted of a crime.”  The same figure appears in a DHS post praising Trump for making America safe.  The 75% figure was also bandied around by the DHS the first time Trump was President.

The problem – none of these references are corroborated with evidence.  Perhaps the goal is to repeat something so often that we assume it’s true.

Then there’s Border Czar Tom Homan’s word salads.

Case in point – his extended interview with the New York Times’ Natalie Kitroeff.  There, when asked about arrest priorities, Homan notes that first ICE is going after public security threats but that “no one is off the table.”  He continues, that “we are nation of laws, we have to enforce the laws. If we don’t, we send a message to the whole world that you can come illegally, it’s a crime, don’t worry about it.”  When pressed about the widely unpopular workplace enforcement raids that have taken place on farms, car washes, and construction sites, Homan notes that these are the places where they tend to find violent criminals “hiding.”  

Someone should inform Homan how immigration works.  

People have come to the US historically in waves, usually because they are escaping a famine, the outbreak of war, political or economic disruption, or fear of some form of persecution.  Breaking the law is secondary to the human instinct for self-preservation, as well as love for one’s family.  Such details are lost on Homan who also believes murderers are fixing roofs or doing landscaping.

Furthermore, the focus on public security is made a farse by Trump pressuring agents to make 3,000 arrests a day.  Reports show not only how this hurts the morale of ICE agents, but works at cross purposes with the stated intention of going after “the worst of the worst.”  Sacrificing quantity for quality, agents don’t have the time to investigate who really are the violent criminals.  

Here is where the truth appears, namely, that upping arrest quotas gets the public to finance the deportation industry.

First, people arrested need housing.  Enter private detention firms Geo Group and CoreCivic, which together either house themselves or run publicly-owned jails for nearly 90% of ICE detainees.  These same companies spent extravagantly last year either donating directly to the Trump campaign, or to Trump-affiliated super-PACs.  

Trump’s fancy to send migrants to El Salvador, or Sudan, is also part of this scheme as Geo Group’s subsidiary, Geo Transport Inc, signed a five-year contract last year with ICE to conduct deportation flights.  

Rightwing players in tech are also cashing in.  Palantir – the firm founded by GOP megadonor and Trump ally, Peter Thiel – was awarded a $30 million contract with ICE to track migrants, particularly those who over stay visas as well as leave voluntarily.  This amount is in addition to the $113 million given to the software giant to analyze data from DHS and the Pentagon.  

And the American taxpayer is stuck with the bill for all these facets of immigration enforcement.

Of the billions dedicated for border security in Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill,’ $45 billion is for detention capacity, $14.4 billion for transportation, and $1.5 billion for infrastructural modernization, including technological enhancements, with billions more for hiring new agents and conducting special operations.  

Trump administration mouthpieces dangle shiny objects to distract us while they stuff bodies into a for-profit detention system.  They confuse us because the facts are not on their side.  Adding insult to injury, we, American taxpayers, are paying for this.  But beyond dollars and cents, the real cost is to our institutions of public security that are now for sale.    

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