Something is rotten in the Democratic Party's immigration argument. The Trump administration has insisted that when it comes to deportations, they would go after the "worst of the worst" first — the murderers, the rapists, the terrorists. President Donald Trump reiterated that's exactly what he was doing. Of course, that doesn’t always mean the worst of the worst are getting deported, and Democrats pretend to be angry about that. But they’re not. They’re angry about any illegal immigrant being deported.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) pressed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on this very issue. He cited data suggesting that 85% of the roughly 400,000 immigrants ICE arrested during Trump's first term had no violent criminal record. "The president said over and over at his rallies, 'We're going after the worst of the worst, the terrorists, the murderers, the rapists,'" Durbin said. "And then it turns out that 85% of the people you've gone after have no criminal history whatsoever. How do you explain that?"
Noem didn't blink. She pointed out that the left's beloved crime statistics routinely exclude offenses that devastate real families — DUIs, embezzlement, theft, drug trafficking. "If you were counting crimes that these individual illegal aliens in this country have committed," she said, "it would be well over sixty-five to seventy percent of the individuals that are detained today have those crimes on their record, besides the crime of being in this country illegally."
Durbin: "85% of the 400,000 immigrants that ICE arrested had no criminal record."
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) March 3, 2026
Noem: "When you talk about violent crimes, the crimes you're saying don't matter... You're not counting DUIs, embezzlements, theft, drug trafficking, and others." pic.twitter.com/OvzuTy8tgp
Of course, there's something even more fundamental that Durbin's framing conveniently skips over: Crossing the border illegally is a crime. But targeting the worst of the worst has never meant ignoring the rest.
Here’s the thing: Democrats have repeatedly made it clear that they want to protect the worst of the worst as much as the illegal immigrants who haven’t committed any additional crimes after coming into this country.
Let’s look at the evidence.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger — who ran as a moderate and was supposed to be the reasonable face of the party — is currently blocking ICE from detaining Abdul Jalloh, an illegal immigrant from Sierra Leone with over 30 prior arrests who is charged with fatally stabbing 41-year-old Stephanie Minter at a Fairfax County bus stop last month. Spanberger's office is demanding a signed judicial warrant before she'll cooperate with federal authorities. ICE has made clear it doesn't need one. A woman is dead, the suspect is in custody, and the governor of Virginia is running interference for him.
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Then there's the case of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, who was convicted in December 2025 of obstructing immigration agents trying to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a criminal illegal immigrant from Mexico facing battery charges. Dugan didn't just refuse to cooperate; she actively interfered. She tried to protect Flores-Ruiz, a criminal, from being detained by ICE. A sitting judge used her position on the bench to protect a man the law said should be removed.
These aren't isolated incidents. They're a pattern. And they expose the left's "worst of the worst" rhetoric for what it actually is: a moving target designed to make every deportation look illegitimate. To them, there’s no difference between the illegal immigrant murderers and rapists and the otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrant. Anti-ICE activists have even helped child rapists evade ICE.
So, let’s not pretend that Democrats are outraged that the Trump administration isn’t only deporting “the worst of the worst.” The fact is that they’re outraged that Trump is deporting any illegal immigrants at all.
