They are incredibly conservative and also very pro-migration. They represent the chamber of commerce wing of the republican party, and nothing about publication should be a surprise to anybody.

> should be considered innocent until proven guilty

Agree if they are charged with a crime. But is being present in the country without a valid visa (or overstaying a visa, or similar) a criminal charge or an administrative violation? If I park my car where I'm not supposed to, it gets towed. There's no trial or presumption of innocence. The car is where it is.

> If you get hit with a traffic stop, you shouldn't be lumped in with violent offenders.

Yes, for whatever additional crimes they have committed.

Being here illegally, that's what ICE is after (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and they are fully in their prevue to send home people who are here against the law.

You are depicting this as some dramatic shift, but the Cato institute has always been anti-Trump.

Obama deported way more than Trump does and no one complained. Why is that so? Or at least the complaints were not nearly on the level they are now. The actual anomaly is the Biden era.

> They are going after illegal immigrants.

They are also going after legal immigrants who have any crime on their record, even just a misdemeanor from decades ago. There was one a few weeks ago for example of a Canadian who has lived here for something like 30 years, since he was a child, on a permanent resident visa. As a teen he participated in some normal but illegal high school shenanigan and got a misdemeanor on his record. When returning from a business trip to Canada he was stopped and deported over that high school misdemeanor.

They are also trying to make it hard for these people to defend themselves. For example in another case they are trying to deport a legal permanent resident who came here is a kid from the UK something like 40 or 50 years ago. She has an American husband, American children, and American grandchildren. A decade or two she wrote a check for a small amount and failed to ensure enough money was in the account. She pleaded guilty to the lowest level of passing a bad check and served probation. This is the only blemish on her record.

Not only have they decided that she needs to be expelled as quickly as possible, they put her in a detention facility far from her home even though there are facilities with room much closer to home, making it hard for her family to visit. I believe I read they have also moved her at least once, making it hard for her lawyer to visit. (I believe she also may have spent time in solitary, because she kept asking for someone to be allowed to bring her prescription medicine, but I may be mixing that up with another case).

Even if you can somehow make a case that every non-citizen who is legally here no matter how long should be deported if they have any blemish on their record, no matter how minor, I don't see how you can make case that they should deliberately make it hard for them to get a hearing.

I also don't see how you can make a case that they should even be in detention. If you really think there is a risk that they would run rather than stay around until their hearing, an ankle monitor would be sufficient and cheaper.

They specifically call out why the semantics matter in the actual article, in the first paragraph.

> President Donald Trump premised his mass deportation agenda on the idea that he will be “returning millions and millions of criminal aliens.” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has repeatedly claimed that they are arresting the “worst of the worst.”

When speaking to Trump supporting friends who employ illegal immigrants they specifically defend that it is only the "bad ones."

I hate how everyone overlooks the fact that most "illegal immigrants" are committing a civil offense that is not supposed to allow for any detainment like a criminal offense. And the criminal offenses that are mentioned in the study are mostly state offenses that are supposed to be handled by state law enforcement. There are a very small number of people who have actually committed federal criminal offenses that justify any detainment at all by ICE.

lmao! how can you say that when they literally just killed a citizen.

Simple, somebody wants you not to know these facts.

Alternate comments you could have posted...

The narrative this administration is pushing is that immigratns are terrorists and rapists.

The data does not say that 53% have a conviction or charge. It says that 27% do.

The 26% you miscategorized are people with pending charges. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

This comment looks familiar.