Letter: Facts don’t support cartoon about ICE

Wednesday July 11, 2018

Agency doesn't patrol the border, and the authorities that do aren't prosecuting many immigrants for gang involvement, drug smuggling or terrorism.

Editor:
The "Another view" cartoon in the July 10 Reading Eagle should have been labeled "A completely unsupported by facts but what Trump supporters want to hear view" instead.

But before getting to statistics, let's call out the cartoonist on his conflation of apprehensions and separations of children at the U.S.-Mexican border with Immigration and Customs Enforcement removals from the country, many of which deal with people who have been law-abiding once in the U.S. or have only committed minor, nonviolent crimes. Conveniently for the agency, the ICE website does not break out removals due to any of the categories shown in the cartoon: "terrorists," "drug smuggler" "MS-13 gang."

However, Customs and Border Protection, with which ICE is being conflated in the cartoon, does have revealing statistics on its website. For the current fiscal year that began Oct. 1, CBP has undertaken more than 400,000 enforcement actions.

Gang apprehensions have totaled a whopping 509, or about a tenth of a percent. Drug seizures are not itemized by number of apprehensions but rather by weight and were overwhelmingly for marijuana. And not a single terrorist has been nabbed, which stands to reason since so many of today's domestic terrorist acts turn out to be perpetuated by U.S. citizens.

I'm not holding my breath for a cartoon to take them to task. That would have to be "Reality View."

James M. Beidler
Bern Township

Facts don't support cartoon about ICE