Dem
47
GOP
53
A little over a month ago, we wrote the first part of our ongoing series "Minneapolis Is Apparently the Hill that The White House Wants to Die On." That will definitely be back next week, for at least a couple of entries, and it definitely has at least six or seven entries to go. In that item, we included this paragraph:
DHS has also launched a website headlined "ARRESTED: WORST OF THE WORST." It contains profiles of people who have been arrested by ICE. It's not clear exactly what timeframe the collection covers, but it's 1,238 pages at 12 profiles per page, working out to roughly 14,850 profiles (the last page does not have the full 12). This does not seem to be the "worst of the worst" arrested by ICE, it appears to be EVERYONE arrested by ICE. The highlighted individuals' offenses are listed, and among the crimes/alleged crimes that apparently rank a person among the "WORST OF THE WORST" are "Marijuana," "Unauthorized Use of Vehicle," "Perjury," and "Fraud."
Readers also wrote in that weekend to heap further scorn on the site.
It turns out that we were all correct to look askance at the whole thing. The number of profiles eventually grew to 25,000, which clearly indicates that something screwy was going on, since even the "new and improved" brownshirt ICE is not going to be able to arrest 10,000 people in a little over a month. The list of "crimes" also expanded, to include things as trivial as speeding and jaywalking. If those things make you "the worst of the worst," then you folks should be ashamed of reading a site written by (Z).
This obvious propaganda effort became so comically bad that CNN eventually launched an investigation. And they found exactly what you think they found. In essence, DHS just collected data on every brown-skinned prisoner who has crossed paths with law enforcement in the last decade or so. It didn't matter if those folks were actually arrested by ICE, or even by one of the other DHS agencies. It didn't matter if those folks were convicted. Obviously, it also didn't matter what crime (or, in many cases, misdemeanor) a person was charged with—any offense made a person one of "the worst of the worst." And DHS's data entry was terrible, such that many photos and names were matched with the wrong crimes. If you were accused of jaywalking and marijuana possession, and DHS put up a website saying you'd been arrested for raping a 12-year-old, do you think you might have a case for defamation? We bet there are a lot of lawyers out there willing to give it a try.
When called out on the utter fiasco of a website, DHS admitted that there were issues, and they were the fault of a "glitch." Hm, that's an odd way to spell "Kristi Noem." A spokesperson said that the website will be "fixed," but really, who cares? The site was ridiculous on its face, and now it's been proven to be a work of (racist) fiction. Nobody can possibly take it seriously anymore, excepting people who already believed the U.S. is being overrun by teeming hordes of brown immigrants. (Z)