We live in a time when things that are clearly wrong are being loudly argued.
President Donald Trump has claimed gas prices are heading toward $2 a gallon. (Not true. Gasoline prices just dropped below an average of $3 a gallon this week.) The drug carried on one smuggler’s ship off the coast of Venezuela is powerful enough to kill 25,000 Americans. (Another Trump claim is not entirely accurate: The annual estimated number of deaths from all overdoses last year totaled 80,391.) Americans caught in immigration raids would only be inconvenienced temporarily, and would be released “immediately” as soon as they were determined to be “lawfully” in the country.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s final argument in his opinion condoning racial profiling by immigration authorities in the Los Angeles area sweep caught our attention.
It was an easy question to test. Have U.S. citizens been detained and arrested, or have they not yet? Coincidentally, there was a reporter who was tracking exactly that. Nicole Foy had scoured social media posts, news reports, and court records and had already discovered multiple cases of citizens being arrested or detained. The article was sufficient to refute Mr. Kavanaugh’s false statements.
We decided to do more than ‘fact-checking’, which is now a well-known form of journalism. Fact-checking is valuable, but it usually gets lost in the cacophony of claims and counter-arguments the next day. So we set out to tally the national number of U.S. citizens detained by immigration officials through a unique, independent report. Our hope was that the exact numbers might break through the noise. We knew from the beginning that this list would be significantly smaller. Those who have been wrongfully arrested have good reason not to antagonize immigration officials any further.
Foy’s report identified more than 170 civilians detained in attacks and protests. More than 20 of them reported being detained by immigration officials for at least a day, during which time they were not allowed to call loved ones or lawyers. They found about 130 people arrested on charges of assaulting or obstructing investigators, many of whom were ultimately not charged with any crime or whose cases were quickly dismissed.
In response to questions from ProPublica about the story, the Department of Homeland Security said its agents did not racially profile or target Americans. “We do not arrest American citizens for immigration enforcement purposes,” spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin wrote.
This article turned out to be one of the most read studies of the year. Congressional Democrats launched their own investigation, and the number of Americans detained (more than 170) became the focus of questions about the immigration raids. This number has become an irrefutable fact in the conversation about immigration enforcement.
Weeks after our article was published, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters in Gary, Indiana, that “no American citizens have been arrested or detained,” adding, “Our focus is on illegal immigrants. And anything you hear or report otherwise is simply not true, it’s false reporting.”
This claim received new fact-checks from media outlets, many of which cited our arrest numbers.
Our list of detained Americans was compiled by Shoe Leather Reports. That includes scouring English and Spanish social media, lawsuits, court records, and local media reports, as well as interviewing dozens of people to hear first-hand accounts. To compile our tally, we compiled and reviewed every incident we could find where citizens were held against their will by immigration officials.
Another recent ProPublica article used internal government data to pinpoint a major new trend in the record number of children detained in federal facilities after encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Data shows 600 children have been placed in care by immigration officials so far this year, the highest annual total since records began more than a decade ago. This number was just the beginning. We knew from previous reporting on this matter that some immigrant children placed in federal shelters were removed from their homes due to concerns about possible abuse or neglect. So we gathered records for about 400 children and found that about 160 were in custody due to child welfare concerns, which is similar to levels seen in previous years. But our report showed something unprecedented. That means the vast majority of children are being detained because of the ongoing crackdown, and many were picked up during routine traffic stops or immigration checks, or were detained after ICE agents came to a home or business to arrest someone.
McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, told ProPublica that ICE “does not separate families” and, as has been the practice in the past, offers parents the option of deporting their children together or placing them with another safe adult. The White House said the administration is “ensuring that unaccompanied minors are not placed in dangerous situations.”
As a news organization leader who seeks to drive change through journalism, I am often asked how we can restore public trust in the media, which has steadily declined over the years. Of course, there is no easy answer to this question. One is to admit when you make a mistake and correct the record as soon as possible. The other is to be accurate in our journalism by providing concrete statistics that our readers can verify.
As we reminded our supporters this week in our winter fundraising appeal, this type of reporting takes a tremendous amount of time and effort. Earlier this year, we successfully tracked the criminal histories of 238 Venezuelans sent to El Salvador’s notorious prison. After obtaining unreleased U.S. government data and reviewing (with the help of our Venezuelan reporting partners) police and court records in the U.S. and abroad, we found that the Trump administration knew that at least 197 people had not been convicted of a crime in the United States. Only six people were convicted of violent crimes in American courts. The study allowed the creation of an interactive database of all men and showed, among other things, that at least 166 men were labeled as gang members because of their tattoos, although the government itself admits that this indicator is unreliable.
When the federal government raided a Chicago apartment in late September, claiming it had been occupied by members of the Tren de Aragua gang, our reporters followed up on the facts. Federal authorities refused to release the names of the 37 detained Venezuelan migrants, so reporters identified 21 of them and interviewed more than a dozen. Their report, which included an examination of public records databases, court documents, video recordings, and social media posts, ultimately found little evidence to support the government’s claims.
Such clear precision would not come from a federal government that restricts the collection and publication of data on the effectiveness of major initiatives. Or from Congressional Oversight Committees, which rarely hold public hearings. Or by the Immigration Bureau’s internal oversight agency, which has largely been dismantled. At this moment in history, it is in the hands of the media to count and measure, and we thank you every day for your help in carrying out this important work in our democracy.
