Whenever the government releases an immigration statistic, a story follows—and often that story is shaped by the label attached to it. In recent weeks, the Washington Post and the New York Times published reports about a surge in arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Post said the agency had detained more people without a criminal record this year than in all of 2025. The Times echoed that theme, writing that “ICE arrests soar as people with no criminal record are increasingly targeted.” The image those headlines create is stark: federal agents sweeping up harmless people, mothers, fathers, students, workers, people whose only sin was being in the country without permission. But the White House and Department of Homeland Security say that image is a dangerous distortion. They are pushing back against what they call false narratives being advanced by the mainstream media. Their argument is not abstract. They are showing their work, listing case after case of people who were labeled noncriminal by the press but who are wanted for murder, child sexual abuse, and gang violence in their home countries. According to Lauren Bis, a special assistant to the president and White House spokeswoman, nearly 70 percent of illegal aliens arrested by ICE have already been convicted or charged with a crime inside the United States. But, she says, the real proportion of public safety threats is much higher, because many of those labeled noncriminal have criminal records in their home country. Those records include murder, child sex abuse, and gang activity. “These are just a few of the media’s ‘non-criminals,’” Bis said. “Why does the mainstream media continue to peddle false narratives protecting criminal illegal aliens?” The question hangs over a broader clash between data and humanity, statistics and fear, and it is not going away quietly.
To understand the dispute, one has to understand the boxes ICE uses when it counts arrests. A criminal alien is someone with a conviction or pending charge in the United States. A noncriminal alien is, in the narrowest technical sense, someone without a current U.S. criminal case. But the real world is not that tidy. A person can be a fugitive from justice in another country and still clean in the eyes of the federal database. The Department of Homeland Security explains the problem plainly: nearly 70 percent of illegal aliens ICE arrested have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges just in the U.S. That word “just” is important. The statistic does not account for people wanted for violent crimes in their home country or another country. It does not account for INTERPOL notices, for human rights abusers, for gang members, for terrorists, or for people guilty of other offenses beyond American soil. In other words, a person with no U.S. record could be a murderer in Honduras, a child predator in Mexico, a gang assassin in El Salvador. The label noncriminal tells you nothing about their past or what they might do next. DHS also reminds the public that entering the country without authorization is itself a crime. It is not simply an administrative inconvenience. But because administrative immigration offenses are often separated from criminal categories in media reports, the public sees a gap that is not really there. The gap is filled by foreign warrants and international justice. The administration’s point is that public safety should not stop at the border. A criminal history written in another language is still a criminal history. A warrant issued by another court is still a warrant. And a killer who has already demonstrated the capacity to take a life is exactly the kind of person American communities need to fear, whether his conviction came from a courtroom in Kansas or a courthouse in San Salvador.
The clearest way to test the narrative is to look at individual cases. In May, Homeland Security Investigations arrested Josue Saul Garcia-Lopez, a Salvadoran national. On paper, he had no U.S. criminal record. On paper, he was exactly the kind of person the Washington Post and New York Times might describe as a noncriminal arrest. But the paperwork from El Salvador tells another story. There, he was wanted on an international warrant as an active member of MS-13, a street gang that has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization. His alleged activity included extortion and robbery schemes that terrorized people in El Salvador for years. That is not the resume of a harmless immigrant. That is the resume of a person who turned violence into a way of life. Just days before that arrest, ICE got another supposed noncriminal: Fredy Alexander Lopez Lara, a Honduran citizen. His international warrant was for homicide. Not assault, not larceny, not a drug possession charge. Homicide. In April, progress again brought one of these noncriminals to light. Danny Granados-Garcia, a Salvadoran national and an MS-13 member, had no U.S. record, but he was wanted in his home country for murdering a pastor. Imagine that crime. Imagine the weight it placed on a community of believers, the grief and rage and fear that followed. Now imagine that man walking down a street in an American city, unknown to his neighbors, invisible to the databases that generated the media’s numbers. The administration’s case is not that every noncriminal arrest is a monster. It is that too many of them clearly are. And it wants to know why a man’s victims in his home country matter less because he crossed a border.
The pattern continues with cases that are even harder to ignore. In March, Border Patrol agents in the San Diego sector arrested Salvador Suazo-Garcia in Lemon Grove, California. His U.S. entry was legal. He had arrived in May 2021, during the Biden adminstration. But officials in Mexico had a warrant for him, and his alleged crime was lewd and lascivious acts upon a child. This is not a case of immigration enforcement gone wrong. This is a case of a man who allegedly abused a child in one country and then found sanctuary in another. Around the same time, federal agents arrested Silvia Del Rosario Torres-Castro, a Mexican woman, after discovering she was wanted in her home country for homicide. Then there is Antonio Israel Lazo-Quintanilla. His name might not ring a bell, but his mugshot is unmistakable. Tattoos cover every part of his face, and across his forehead are the numbers 666. A person does not choose that kind of visual identity to blend in at a neighborhood barbecue. The Salvadoran national was a member of the 18th Street Gang, another foreign terrorist organization. His only known crime in the United States was driving without a license. But in El Salvador, he was on the country’s most-wanted gang members list. He was wanted for aggravated homicide, extortion, possession of drugs, and other felonies. DHS pointed out that technically his only U.S. crime was driving without a license, but that narrow legal fact made him look like a noncriminal to those who rely on categories. He was not. He was a man whose own country had spent years trying to bring him to justice. And there he was, on American streets, until law enforcement finally caught up with him.
Perhaps the most chilling examples are the brothers. ICE arrested Pedro Luis Ortiz-Mendez and José Vicente Ortiz-Mendez in Texas. The two men are from Mexico. They are wanted for multiple murders tied to an attack on a festival in San Luis Potosí. In that attack, at least one victim was shot. Another was attacked with a machete. Think about what that means. A festival, a public celebration, a place where families gather, music plays, children run. And into that scene came violence so grotesque that it left bodies and lifelong trauma. The brothers were accused of being part of that. They fled to the United States. There, in the U.S. federal system, if they did not have an American conviction, they might have been counted as noncriminals. Lauren Bis, the White House spokeswoman, cited these and other cases to make the adminstration’s point unavoidable. “These are just a few examples of murderers, gang members, and pedophiles the media refers to as ‘noncriminals’ because they only have criminal records in their home country,” she said. Her tone was fierce, but the examples made it credible. “No one would want these heinous criminals to be their neighbors,” Bis continued. “From foreign fugitives, gang members, and terrorists, ICE is getting the worst of the worst off our streets and out of our country.” The word neighbor is deliberately chosen. It invites ordinary Americans to picture the people living next door. It forces a personal reaction. A woman who abused a child. A gang leader with 666 on his forehead. A brother who helped murder festival-goers. Are these the noncriminals the press wants to defend? The administration’s answer is clear, and it is asking the media to accept the same conclusion.
Ultimately, the argument is over more than statistics. It is over the meaning of fairness and the purpose of immigration enforcement. The mainstream media, by focusing on the absence of U.S. criminal records, has created a category of innocence that the White House says does not exist. DHS has been direct: entering the country unlawfully is a crime. But even when it is not counted that way, there are foreign murder warrants, child abuse charges, gang affiliateions, and terrorist designations that make a mockery of the word noncriminal. The adminstration is not asking Americans to assume every arrested immigrant is guilty. It is asking them to look at the evidence, to examine the cases, to read the names and the crimes. It is asking why the press never seems to mention that the man described as a noncriminal is actually wanted for killing a pastor in El Salvador. It is asking why the woman described as a noncriminal was actually a homicide suspect in Mexico. And it is asking why the brothers described as noncriminals were actually accused of machete attacks at a festival. These are not abstract questions. They are questions with families behind them, victims behind them, communities behind them. The White House and DHS are not going to stop making the argument. They believe they have the truth on their side, and they have shown their work. The media may continue to defend the label, but the adminstration has a different word for the people they are handcuffing and deporting: threats. In a country divided over immigration, that is a line that many Americans will understand. They might not be able to parse every statistic or read every federal report. But they know what murder is. They know what child sexual abuse is. They know what a gang tattoo on a forehead means. And when the government says it is removing those people from their streets, many Americans will not need a statstician to tell them whether that is justice.