The Department of Homeland Security had to fix its website showing the “worst of the worst” arrested immigrants after the agency incorrectly described hundreds of them.
After launching the website last December, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the White House have cited it as evidence that its immigration crackdown was working. However, a CNN review of the site found numerous errors in the descriptions of those arrested, prompting an acknowledgment from DHS.
The number inaccuracies stretched to hundreds, according to CNN.
The site, as the Daily Beast reported the month it went up, had claimed that many of the “worst of the worst” were arrested not for homicide or sex crimes, for instance, but the lesser crimes of traffic offenses, marijuana possession, or illegal reentry.
When confronted about it, a DHS spokesperson told CNN that this was due to a “glitch.” They added later that it had been “resolved.”
“This is a glitch on the WOW website the impacted about 5% of the entries,” they said, adding, “Many of these who are listed as traffic offense and illegal reentry, which is a felony, have additional crimes.”
A DHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
The report is another instance of DHS being exposed for overhyping the “worst of the worst” website.
Earlier this month, CBS News reported on a DHS document indicating that fewer than one in seven individuals ICE had arrested in Donald Trump’s second term had been charged with or convicted of violent crimes.
Additionally, 0.5 percent of the nearly 393,000 ICE arrests involved people accused or convicted of homicide, according to DHS’s own data. For sexual assault, the frequency was 1.4 percent; for weapons offenses, 1.6 percent; and for dangerous drug charges, 5.7 percent.
The Daily Beast reported in December that more than two dozen of the so-called “worst of the worst” only had traffic offenses on their record.
In response, then-Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote in a statement, “As the media whitewashes the facts, day in and day out, our brave men and women of ICE risk their lives for the American people... With this transparent tool, they can see for themselves what public safety threats were lurking in their neighborhoods.”
