NPR Claims Trump's ICE Is Detaining American Citizens: Turns Out Its Record Blows Obama's ICE Out of the Water
The giant hissing sound taking place is the air being let out of the inflated media narrative about the woes inflicted on America during President Donald Trump’s enforcement of immigration laws.
John Lott, the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and a former senior adviser for research and statistics in the Department of Justice, took a look at the facts behind the hype and found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents under Trump make fewer mistakes than in the era of former President Barack Obama.
Lott wrote an opinion piece for the New York Post examining a media allegation that 170 Americans were detained by ICE, which also claimed that 32 people died in its custody last year.
Lott also noted that NPR, which Trump tried to have defunded, alleged that “many” American citizens “have been mistaken” for illegal aliens, and that there’s “a long history of immigration agencies not having a good track record.’”
John Lott ran the numbers. Here they are in clip-and-save format:
Of 170 US citizens detained by ICE, about 130 were arrested for interfering with or assaulting officers, according to the left-leaning ProPublica.
Trump error rate = 0.0067%.
Obama’s error rate = 0.0225%.…
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) January 24, 2026
But according to Lott, of the 170 U.S. citizens detained by ICE, 130 were arrested for interfering with ICE operations. Of the other 40, he wrote, only half were held by more than a day.
That comes to 20 people out of 595,000 arrested, he noted.
Lott calculated an error rate of 0.0067 percent for ICE during Trump’s first year, which comes to one error out of every 14,925 arrests.
Lott then noted that in Obama’s final two years, ICE had “263 mistaken arrests, 54 mistaken detentions (book-ins), and four mistaken removals.”
In looking at detentions alone during that portion of the Obama years, ICE’s error rate was 0.0225 percent, or a mistake every 4,444 arrests, which is about “3.36 times higher than under Trump.”
Lott also examined the claim of 32 deaths in ICE custody. Noting that data is not always available for perfect comparison, Lott said there were 56 deaths in ICE custody across Obama’s eight years in office. Using available detention numbers, that translates to a rate of 0.007 percent, which meant one illegal immigrant died for every 14,314 detainees.
Trump’s rate came to 0.0054 percent, Lott wrote, about one death out of every 18,594 illegal immigrants detained.
“The critics’ demonization tactics are making federal agents’ jobs considerably more dangerous,” Lott wrote.
How Trump’s ICE enforcement record blows Obama’s out of the water— by a lot
The media is lying about the supposed mistakes by ICEhttps://t.co/grwIgngJET#illegals #illegalsliens
— John R Lott Jr. (@JohnRLottJr) January 23, 2026
“Assaults on federal immigration officers increased by 1,347% in 2025, as agents experienced a terrifying 8,000% surge in death threats. Car attacks on ICE agents spiked by 3,200%,” he said.
“No federal agency is perfect. In immigration enforcement, as in all law enforcement operations, mistakes will be made. But the media’s lack of perspective on the data, and their refusal to put the numbers in context, is putting a match to an explosive public debate,” Lott added.
“Responsible journalism should inform us, not distort reality — or fuel hostility toward those doing a difficult and dangerous job.”
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