Leftist media outlets love to claim that certain illegal aliens have no criminal record. In reality, of course, every illegal alien has committed a crime, but as a Department of Homeland Security legal official emphasized, it is very rare for illegal aliens to break our laws only once and never commit other violations. The “no criminal record” lie is laughably bogus.
CBS News caused controversy by trying to leave out parts of the interview that its correspondent Gianna Toboni conducted with DHS General Counsel James Percival. After Percival said that the Sunday segment on 60 Minutes left out a lot of what he had said, CBS published the full interview Monday. A clip in which Percival refuted the argument that many illegal aliens are “law-abiding” illustrates why CBS was trying to do damage control to hide their poor journalism.
Ironically, Toboni claimed she was “going for the clarity here, you know, 'cause I hear a lot about the violent offenders. Point taken. But what I don't hear about is the law-abiding folks who, in our reporting, is more than half.”
Even presuming that CBS numbers are reliable, which they aren’t, the idea that we can call a person present in our country specifically because he or she has violated our laws “law-abiding” is so patently preposterous that it’s hard to believe even a mainstream media hack could say it with a straight face.
Percival somewhat incredulously asked, “You're suggesting that people who are in this country illegally are law-abiding?” Perhaps suddenly realizing how ridiculous that sounded, Toboni amended: “Let's say don't have a criminal record outside of an immigration offense, …overstaying a tourist visa.”
“If you are in this country illegally, it is virtually impossible for you to live in this country and not commit additional legal violations—working without authorization, identity theft. There’s a lot of illegality that goes on when you are breaking the law.” @DHSGenCounsel https://t.co/nRN5OSjsfJ
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) October 27, 2026
Percival promptly retorted, “So, if you are in this country illegally, it is virtually impossible for you to live in this country and not commit additional legal violations, because, you know, working without authorization or identity theft. There's a lot of illegality that goes on when you are breaking the law. But I do really reject your characterization of someone who is in this country illegally and breaking our laws as, quote unquote, law-abiding. I think that's fundamentally inaccurate.”
Related: Feds Step in: DOJ Charges Illegal Alien Who Smashed the Iwo Jima Statue at Quantico
Of course it is. And Toboni is also wrong when she claims that a significant number of deportations are of individuals with no criminal record besides immigration violations. As of August, DHS stated that approximately 70% of ICE arrestees had either pending charges or criminal convictions within the United States. “This statistic doesn't account for those wanted for violent crimes in their home country or another country, INTERPOL notices, human rights abusers, gang members, terrorists, etc.,” the agency added. DHS doesn’t have the time and resources to arrest as many of the illegal aliens living in America as we all could wish, so it tends to focus on the worst of the worst.
World Metrics has some interesting data from within the last six years. As of 2021, a TRAC study showed that about 34% of document fraud arrestees were illegal aliens. In 2022, illegal aliens stealing identities for fake documents accounted for about 30% of identity theft arrests in America. DHS numbers further showed that just under 24%, or about a fourth, of drug trafficking arrests as of 2022 involved illegal aliens.
From 2020-2023, just under 12% of all criminal arrestees, 12.3% of murderers, 14% of assaulters, and 10% of robbers were illegal aliens, per the FBI and the Justice Department. The Cato Institute estimated in 2021 that illegal aliens are between two and three times more likely to commit violent crimes than Americans are. Toboni would never want to cover these statistics because they show how much illegal immigration fuels crime.
Of course, Democrats also go out of their way to try to whitewash the criminal records of illegal aliens. In sanctuary states and jurisdictions like Virginia, New York, and California, officials and judges will actually release violent illegal aliens specifically to ensure they avoid deportation.
Sanctuary DAs are treating illegal aliens better than American citizens! In New York City, prosecutors are being told to let criminal illegal aliens, including pedophiles, off lightly so that @ICEgov has a harder time deporting them. Far too many times, innocent New Yorkers have been victimized by criminal illegal aliens and found their leaders taking the side of the criminals rather than the victims. Under the Trump administration, the American people will ALWAYS come first and we will relentlessly remove illegal aliens from New York, even while local officials REFUSE to honor thousands of detainers.
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) October 26, 2026
No illegal alien is “law-abiding.” And many, if not most, of them also commit other crimes, because they don't have any respect for either U.S. laws or other people's property.
