The anti-ICE lies that get halfway round the world
Whether or not it was Mark Twain who said it, it certainly is an astute and still-relevant observation: that a lie spreads fast and is often impossible to correct.
There are many variations on the theme. The first that’s documented is by Swift:
Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…
Hear, hear.
Other versions:
By the early 19th century, the idea had spread to the United States and, by 1820 (fifteen years before Twain was born), “the truth” was trying to pull on its boots before starting out after the lie. Various 19th century versions of this have “the truth” pulling on “her boots” or “lacing up her boots.” (Probably because, in classical artistic representation, “truth” often took a feminine form.)
At roughly the same time, people began referring to a lie travelling from “Maine to Georgia” while truth was still putting on its boots.
Liars and propagandists are well aware of the phenomenon, which means that lies are a tactic that often works. It’s a tactic the left has come to use very often, because the MSM is simpatico and complicit in the spread of such lies. That’s invaluable, as is social media.
Which brings us to the fact that last night I was in the company of a friend who was listening to the nightly network news, and it was full of references to some pathetic 5-year-old who supposedly was cruelly mistreated by ICE. And yet today we have this:
A Thursday update to the article said the Department of Homeland Security had confirmed to KARE that both Liam and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, were at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas.
DHS informed the media outlet that “its agents tried to get Liam’s mother to take the boy but she allegedly refused and ‘abandoned’ him.”
In the meantime, Omar’s one-sided version of events posted the previous evening had quickly set off a firestorm on social media. The sensational claim that ICE had arrested a lone five-year-old raced across the Twitterverse overnight, triggering widespread outrage among the Left. Countless users echoed the story uncritically, denouncing ICE and amplifying what DHS later described as a false narrative — before the underlying facts had a chance to emerge.
Conservative influencer Allie Beth Stuckey described the internet reaction in a post on X:
“On Instagram, it’s 2020 all over again. Women, including many, many Christian women, are being completely duped by the anti-ICE propaganda. Believed the “ICE arrested a lone 5-year-old” completely. It’s demoralizing. I am working HARD in my DMs and posts and on my show trying to combat this nonsense and appeal to these women. However, I felt like I was the only white evangelical woman questioning BLM in 2020, and I don’t feel as alone now. There are more of us 5 years later, and I am grateful for that.”
On Thursday morning, DHS published a statement to set the record straight. The agency wrote:
“ICE did NOT target a child. The child was ABANDONED.”
The left doesn’t care. Most of the watchers and readers of the MSM probably don’t care – those images of the child are burned into the brain along with the story.
And this:
ICE agents took that 5-year-old boy in Minnesota to MCDONALD’S, and “played his favorite music to comfort him”
McDonald’s? That’s child abuse right there.
[NOTE: And here’s a list of recently-debunked hoaxes about ICE.]
I’m finding it hard to believe everyone sharing this story believes it. I saw something about a five year old being “arrested by ICE” to be “used as bait” and immediately thought, Hmm, I’ll bet that’s a total spin on what actually happened. I imagine some are spreading it purely for propaganda purposes or to virtue signal to their friends.
@Shadow:I’m finding it hard to believe everyone sharing this story believes it.
A lot of people don’t read past the headline, or they accept someone else’s misleading summary of it. You can see this all the time in any blog comments section, left or right.
Oh yeah…my left friends jumped all over this. Of course they look for ANYTHING they can post about how bad Trump and ICE are. They never question the veracity as it fits perfectly into their world view.
My liberal friends literally do not want to know what the truth is, and will do anything within their rationalizing powers to dismiss out of hand anything that doesn’t fit their Narrative, which is very much their personal religion.
I’ve yet to meet an intellectually honest “progressive”.
Summed it up very well bill.
Father abandons the child and mother refuses to take him, another abandonment. Shouldn’t child abandonment be grounds for termination of parental rights? Seems to me the child deserves to be with adoptive parents who would take care of him, than back with the father who abandoned him, and might well do so again, but maybe that’s just me.
The left is purposely distorting the coverage of every aspect of enforcing immigration law for political purposes.
But what is never done is placing the blame where it belongs. President Biden’s administration made it one of their core policies to flood the country with illegals at a rate that is unprecedented in history.
The Trump administration is tasked with cleaning up this mess and Democrats are fine with the flood of illegals, consuming welfare benefits and depressing wages for lower wage earners and feel good about it.
This is just the left’s playbook, done with a media is part of the left, or sympathetic to it’s aims.
Well not all lies are as reprehensible as the anti-ICE lies
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2026/01/23/blue-lives-matter-has-hilarious-update-on-next-operation-to-fake-out-the-anti-ice-agitators-n2198448
In Washington state there is the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network (WAISN) Deportation Defense Hotline (844)724-3737. They really appreciated the tip about ICE at University of Washington Red Square (the red brick-paved commons area). They especially appreciated the text confirming their worst fears. Texts about ICE at all the Seattle area Home Depots, LOWES, or at their own address would especially be helpful to their cause, Shirley.
WAISN was identified in the article linked above. Karma is a fertile female canid.
Their address is
Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network (WAISN) has multiple contact points across Washington State:
Main Office (Seattle):
2420 4th Avenue South, Seattle, WA 98134
Yakima Office:
507 W Chestnut Ave, Yakima, WA 98902
Lies must carry consequence. Organized obstruction must be prosecuted.
And if all the texts to WISN are less that truthful, how much time and donor money will they waste? Blue Lives Manners sends anti-ICE chasing their own tails.
Karma is a fertile female canid.
Democrats are in existential mode. Their party and their worldview are collapsing. Trump keeps winning while Democrats keep losing and their leadership is being exposed for all its lies, fraud and legal abuses.
They could rethink and moderate, but nah, that’s not happening
Their best strategy probably is to keep lying, polarizing and provoking, then hope that the chaos and violence will give them openings to exploit.
I recently saw an apt coinage: the “accomplice press.”
It pertains widely, so one could also say “accomplice media.”
I’ve yet to meet an intellectually honest “progressive”.
==
Mark Kleiman died a fiew years ago, so now its down to Harold Pollak among the wonks. Alan Dershowitz, Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and Glenn Greenwald have a considerable history on the left but I think are considered apostates by street-level Democrats who’ve heard of them.
==
Leftists tend to be other-directed people, so leftoid discourse is addled by waves of fashion (often manufactured by sorosphere outfits these days). The latest is hostility to immigration enforcement per se. The fashions come and go, but the brand of stupid-and-vicious sustaining them abides and makes leftoid stances predictable.
huxley,
“Their best strategy probably is to keep lying, polarizing and provoking, then hope that the chaos and violence will give them openings to exploit.”
It may not be their best strategy, but you are correct that it is the strategy they will continue to employ. It is in their nature. It’s how they behave. Think of Fani Willis during her testimony.
In my lifetime, at least since I’ve paid attention in the late ’70s, I’ve witnessed Democrat politician after Democrat politician face legal prosecution due to one corrupt act, or another and it’s always the same; lie, accuse, attack, stonewall…
And, in many of the legal jurisdictions they operate in there is a sort-of jury nullification due to DAs, prosecutors and grand juries being on their team. It’s like major league baseball trying to convict the White Sox in their home town in 1919.
And even this morning, not surprising, MS NOW still pushing the lie:
https://www.ms.now/opinion/liam-ramos-bait-ice-vance-bovino-minneapolis
I’m so frustrated by ICE stories – even writ large. Homan and Noem both say that around 70% of detainees have criminal records; presumably that is a checkable number (although I haven’t figured out how to check it). But the other side claims that it’s more like 70-90% do NOT – and that number doesn’t ever seem to come with receipts, only anecdotes.
And then there’s just the sheer number of deportations. The government claims over 600,000, plus almost 2 million self-deportations; the other side claims like 300,000.
It would seem to me that the government side would be trying to ensure that its numbers are as accurate as possible, because they know they’ll be fact-checked to within an inch of all of our lives. Perhaps I’m foolishly overconfident, but THIS administration knows that it’s uniquely subject to that kind of “oversight,” and getting caught out in lies is avoidable by not lying, and they’re not stupid. So I tend to give the government numbers more credence than the claims of the other side.
But in all honesty, as I said, I haven’t figured out how to check their numbers, so am I just as guilty of falling for unverified “facts”?
Jamie, one easy way to check government numbers is to look at ICE’s own reports, which the Cato Institute (definitely not a left-wing org) has done:
https://www.cato.org/blog/5-ice-detainees-have-violent-convictions-73-no-convictions
Relevant quote:
Of people booked into ICE custody this fiscal year (since October 1, 2025):
Nearly three in four (73 percent) had no criminal conviction.
Nearly half had no criminal conviction nor even any pending criminal charges.
Only 8 percent had a violent or property criminal conviction.
Only 5 percent had a violent criminal conviction.
A majority of criminal convicts had vice, immigration, or traffic convictions.
And, again, this is what ICE themselves reported in their mundane record-keeping, not whatever Noem thinks she needs to say at any given moment.
Please note that all of them have one violation to their credit: Entering the US illegally, or staying in violation of a visa limit, a felony. Charged or not, it is a felony, which continues with their presence here, and that makes them “arrestable”.
But to libertarians(?) there is no such thing as a “vice” crime. ??
Another Mike, om – if those interpretations are true, it’s odd that ICE’s _own records_ didn’t make that distinction.
Also, can you please point to the relevant laws which state overstaying a visa is a felony?
Chris:
Federal law, governs immigration, but you know that? Or just another wanker?
Chris:
Federal law, governs immigration, but you know that? Or are you just another wanker?
Om, which specific federal law? The vast majority of lawyers and research I’ve seen say it’s a civil infraction, not a criminal felony.
If this is a case of the left, the media, etc. being in their own bubble, here’s your chance to provide the simple truth which disproves them all.
As an example Chris, see the SCOTUS decision when Arizona tried to enforce immigration law.
Wanker. I’ve got better things to do than educate you.
Chris is right, overstaying your visa is not a criminal offense, but civil. But that doesn’t mean the government doesn’t have the right to deport. I asked Grok about this:
This has been the law since 1996. President Clinton signed the law.
By the way, the same law covers deportation for people who enter the country illegally, only deportation will be quicker for illegal entry.
Illegal immigration is indeed a criminal violation under 8 US Code S 1325:
Failure to depart is also a criminal violation under 8 US Code S 1253:
They are not always felonies, the maximum sentence has to be more than one year, but they are criminal and not civil violations.
Overstaying a visa is not the same as failure to depart. If you overstay AND fail to depart that is criminal and a class E felony.
Brian, I’m not sure I’d look to Grok as a particularly authoritative source, even if it is correct on this issue. 🙂 That said, the original issue was Another Mike’s claim that many of the detainees had criminal records because overstaying a visa is a felony. That seems to not be the case… even assuming most of the detainees had overstayed their visa. Plenty of evidence suggests that many detainees are here legally and sometimes even US citizens…
Om, if you’re talking about Arizona vs United States, the 2012 SC case re: Arizona’s SB 1070, I’m not seeing anything that supports the argument that overstaying a visa is a felony. You absolutely don’t have an obligation to educate me, but you might keep in mind what you think is “obvious” may not always be correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_v._United_States
(For those of you who’ll argue Wikipedia is a biased source: perhaps! But it does link to the source documents and people are welcome to use those to show where the summary is incorrect.)
More AI dreck, and of course Wikipedia.
Dispositive. As if he knew how wikis get edited.
Golly gee, they are crimes after all Chris. Who knew? Well Nick certainly does. Do you?
@Chris:That said, the original issue was Another Mike’s claim that many of the detainees had criminal records because overstaying a visa is a felony. That seems to not be the case…
Only if you split hairs. If you overstay your visa and fail to depart, that is a Class E felony, not a civil violation, punished by up to four years’ imprisonment under 8 US Code S 1253.
Maybe Google doesn’t work for you, I spent about three minutes looking up the US code.
It’s all beside the point. Law says they are not supposed to be here, doesn’t matter if they’re Mother Teresa. Doesn’t matter if they haven’t committed OTHER crimes in addition to their illegal presence.
But on to more pressing issues. Insurrection in the Land of 10,000 Loons, where LARPers go to die.
Pray for the Federal LEOs. AWFLs and their minions are dangerous.
@Niketas, you said it yourself, “Overstaying a visa is not the same as failure to depart. If you overstay AND fail to depart that is criminal and a class E felony.” If you consider your own remarks hair-splitting, godspeed; I would not agree.
You’re right that it is besides the point if we’re talking about whether ICE is only detaining/deporting people who “aren’t supposed to be here.” Unfortunately that seems to include a lot of US Citizens at the very least, as well as people who have a fully legal status.
https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-citizens-arrested-detained-against-will
Cris defines hair splitting, did he cite Wikipedia for that too?
Some are not educatable.
See, Dinning-Kreuger, Chris. You’ve got your lemon juice?
@Chris: Chris, you’re splitting hairs about the label “overstaying a visa”. People who are not supposed to be here are supposed to leave and they commit a felony if they do not, even if that’s not actually just “overstaying a visa”. Most people won’t know what the label for that is, and they might erroneously call it “overstaying a visa” instead of “failure to depart”, but they do know that people who are not supposed to be here are breaking the law if they don’t leave, and it’s a criminal law, they are correct to think that, and you’ve been shown the law.
It clearly doesn’t matter to you what the law actually says or calls anything or you would have looked it up yourself, it only took a minute.
if we’re talking about whether ICE is only detaining/deporting people who “aren’t supposed to be here.”
Not relevant to the criminality of illegal immigration. Cops detain or arrest the wrong people from time to time for all kinds of reasons for all kinds of crimes. Doesn’t mean that the people they should have arrested aren’t criminals, and it doesn’t mean that criminals shouldn’t be arrested unless there’s a guaranteed 0% error rate.
“We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days.” -pro publica
Why didn’t they cooperate with law enforcement? First rule of encountering law enforcement. Cooperate with law enforcement, especially when being arrested. ICE agents are law enforcement. They’re enforcing immigration law.
The document you receive upon naturalization to prove U.S. citizenship is the Certificate of Naturalization (N-550/N-570). It is the definitive legal proof of your new status as a U.S. citizen. I would suggest every naturalized citizen keep a copy of that on their person, like I would suggest every American keep a real ID, which proves your status as an American citizen, since regular drivers licenses are now issued to illegal aliens.
Why is this necessary? Because the Democrats enabled 12 million illegal aliens to enter the country in the last four years.
People like Chris, may be well meaning, but are creating the chaos on the streets. Fight. Resist. ‘It’s your right as an American’. But you’re likely to get your head bashed in in the process.
This isn’t some new thing. What is new are the leftists groups now advocating lawlessness. In the case of Minneapolis, the city/state has made it exponentially worse by refusing to do their job and provide support for another arm of law enforcement trying to do theirs.
@Niketas, I did look it up myself, for more than a few minutes – I came to the conclusion that overstaying a visa was a civil matter, not a criminal one. I asked this audience to show proof otherwise.
But Brian E agreed with my conclusion.
And Grok agreed with my conclusion.
And you agreed with my conclusion.
And Neo agreed with my conclusion to such a degree that she put it on the front page!
You seem to now be trying to bend yourself in knots to defend Another Mike’s incorrect statement that overstaying a visa is a felony. But all you’ve shown is that in some circumstances, *ignoring a final deportation order* is a criminal act (and, per your own admission, not always a felony). You keep suggesting that’s splitting hairs, but the final deportation order is at the other end of a long funnel of (pseudo-) due process through the immigration system – it’s not at all splitting hairs, any more than the electric chair is “splitting hairs” different from summary execution in the streets.
Another problem there is that ICE’s *own statistics* show that the majority of their detainees haven’t been convicted of any such criminal act, and in nearly half the cases, no such proceedings have even been started. So it seems extremely unlikely that these people are subject to a final deportation order, much less that they’re ignoring it. Which is another nail in the coffin for AM’s suggestion that all the detainees are felons, based on your point about 8 US Code S 1253 being the relevant statute here…
Beyond that, you’re trying to argue the position that if people are here illegally, ICE is within their rights to deport them – which is not a position I’ve ever argued against! I fully agree with that statement! My main concern has been addressing Jamie’s question about whether Noem and Homan have been lying about 70% of detainees having criminal records… and every bit of information I’ve seen, including ICE’s own reports, shows that they are, in fact, lying!
Something to keep in mind when Neo – and the rest of the conservative media sphere – relies on statements from Noem et al to show that various shootings, assaults, detentions of minors, etc. aren’t nearly as bad as they seem to be. Even if you agree with the goal of large-scale deportations, perhaps treat the administration’s arguments about how awesome ICE is doing with a grain of salt?
@Brian E, you state:
“Why didn’t they cooperate with law enforcement? First rule of encountering law enforcement. Cooperate with law enforcement, especially when being arrested. ICE agents are law enforcement. They’re enforcing immigration law.”
If you read the Pro Publica story, you’ll see the following quote:
“Garcia Venegas began filming after his undocumented brother asked agents for a warrant. In response, the footage shows, agents yanked his brother to the ground, shoving his face into wet concrete. Garcia Venegas kept filming until officers grabbed him too and knocked his phone to the ground.
Other co-workers filmed what happened next, as immigration agents twisted the 25-year-old’s arms. They repeatedly tried to take him to the ground while he yelled, “I’m a citizen!”
Officers pulled out his REAL ID, which Alabama only issues to those legally in the U.S. But the agents dismissed it as fake. Officers held Garcia Venegas handcuffed for more than an hour. His brother was later deported.”
This is far from the only such documented story out there – often in court cases that ICE has failed to successfully defend itself against.
You seem to downplay the idea of people’s “right as an American” to protest, saying that they’ll get their heads based in. What you seem to be ignoring is that it’s our duty as Americans *to* protest when the government is ignoring our rights… as ICE clearly is in so many cases, including Garcia Venegas’ above. And, again, Noem et al are not credible when they claim otherwise.
Cris demonstrates his ignorance anew: the agent is not required to show anybody the warrant, except the person on the warrant; not the brother, not the mother, not the sister, not the resister.
It is none of their business, you wordy wanker.
— huxley
In more ways than one.
There are many levels to what’s happening in Minneapolis, many ingredients in the witches’ brew.
Walz and Frey, I suspect, are implicated up to their necks in the Somali scandal, and are using ICE as a convenient distraction and maybe a bargaining chip. The Democrats as a whole are facing an existential threat, because the more illegals Trump either removes or convinces to leave, the less ‘padding’ they have for census count to apportion House seats and Electoral College votes. If Trump is really successful, it could potentially be a very significant transfer of power from blue States to Red in the 2030 census. They know that.
It’s less a threat to the Democratic Party, as such, than it is to the people and social class that currently runs the DP. Parties are election-winning machines, if Trump succeeded the power balance would shift, and the Democratic Party would shift with it, different people becoming dominant and the current leadership leaving the stage or becoming what the Brits call ‘backbenchers’.
But for them it’s an existential threat, a metaphorical knife Trump is holding to their political/economic/social throats.
On the right wing side, business groups desperately want this to stop so they can restore the immigrant flood and keep wages down. The Governor of Oklahoma recently suggested that ‘work permits’ were the answer to the illegality problem.
“Just make the illegals legal and the problem is solved!” That’s the Chamber of Commerce talking.
They are becoming The Chamber of Comrades; rope merchants who will never face the gallows, while actually they are the future counter-revolutionaries and wreckers. We know how that turns out.
Chris,
using that Cato article is very misleading and hardly a source when talking about deportations, since CATO’s policy is against deportations.
The Cato headline claims “5% of People Detained By ICE Have Violent Convictions, 73% No Convictions” from Oct. 1 to Nov. 15.
But DHS classifies convictions or charges and even the data from that article shows 73% had convictions or charges.
In the brief clip Cato provided, Noem said “we are focused on the worst of the worst” which is entirely true. That doesn’t mean that other illegals are caught from detainers in local jails around the country.
Anyone in the country that entered illegally is subject to deportation. Cato doesn’t like that.
Chris, anecdote leads to bad policy.
Unfortunately, if a drivers license can be counterfeited, so can a real ID. So can passports, but those would be harder to fake. If someone is a naturalized citizen, they received an IN-570 document. They should keep a copy of that in their billfold.
If they’ve been unlawfully detained, I’m sure there would be a lawyer to take that case.