So Much for the Murderers and Rapists ...

Susan Estrich on Feb 12, 2026

Remember back in the campaign when "immigration" meant deporting the rapists and murderers and gang members who were supposedly flooding across the border and wreaking havoc in our cities? That's what mass deportation meant -- not mass deportation of gardeners and day laborers from Home Depot.

The latest statistics from the Department of Homeland Security, first obtained by CBS News, put the lie to the campaign rhetoric. The headline is that fewer than 14% of the nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during President Donald Trump's first year in office had either charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses. Rapists and murderers? Less than 2% of those arrested by ICE over the past year had homicide or sexual assault charges or convictions. Some 7,500, or 1.9%, of the ICE arrests involved individuals accused of belonging to gangs like Tren de Aragua, a criminal organization with origins in Venezuela's prisons.

Remember when the President and ICE deported more than 200 men accused of being Tren de Aragua members to the notorious prison in El Salvador? A CBS News and "60 Minutes" investigation later found that most of the men did not have a criminal record. The 1.9% -- make it 2% -- is DHS's own statistic. That's it. Total of 4% rapists, murderers and gang members. For that, we are tearing this country apart, endangering fundamental civil rights and civil liberties, putting young soldiers in impossible positions, and tearing families apart.

For what?

And at what cost?

Among the things that Democrats are insisting on in exchange for their votes to fund DHS are tighter rules around the use of warrants, independent investigations of alleged misconduct, a ban on agents wearing masks, and a mandate for them to wear body cameras.

Secretary Noem has said that "effective immediately," DHS would deploy body cameras "to every officer in the field in Minneapolis" and would expand the body-cam program broadly, "as funding is available." That comes after their initial budget proposal was to gut the body cam program, with reports that they planned to cut the staff of ICE's body-cam program from 22 to three and reduce spending on the initiative from about $20.5 million to $5.5 million.

In fact, according to Congressional testimony from ICE, only 3,000 of ICE's 13,000 officers in the field are assigned to wear body cameras, which can record their interactions with the public. Another 6,000 cameras are in the process of being deployed. Roughly half of the 20,000 Border Patrol agents now in the field have cameras and that the number is going to grow, Congress was told.

In the meantime, in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, local police are under orders to turn on their body cams when they confront federal immigration efforts. According to an executive directive issued by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Tuesday,

Los Angeles police officers must turn on their body cameras at the scene of federal immigration enforcement operations and preserve the footage.

"The point that we're trying to make here is that ICE enforcement is not welcome here," Bass said at a news conference Tuesday morning. "We have resisted against it since this terror started, and we will continue to do that."

In addition to recording the federal immigration agents' actions, LAPD officers must document the name and badge number of the agents' on-scene supervisor, summon emergency personnel if someone at a scene is injured and take reports from the public about federal agents' alleged misconduct. The directive from Bass also prohibits federal immigration agents from using city property and imposes a fee on owners who allow federal agents to use private property.

The idea that LAPD -- long criticized for its own record on civil rights and civil liberties -- is now going to protect us against federal encroachment of those rights has some longtime critics of the LAPD shaking their heads. But with the feds clearly out of control, it may be the best we can do.

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To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.