Here we go again. An illegal alien dies in Michigan after fleeing a traffic stop at speeds over 100 mph, and Michigan Democrats line up to blame ICE. DHS put out the facts this week, and the facts don't care about the press conference.

According to Townhall's report, the claim making the rounds was that ICE killed the man during an enforcement action. Democrats repeated it. Activists repeated it. The usual chorus sang it in three-part harmony.

Then DHS released the details. The alien fled from officers at more than 100 mph. He crashed. Nobody in federal custody put a hand on him. The pursuit, the speed, and the crash were his decisions, made in a vehicle he was driving at highway-plus speeds on public roads. DHS said so plainly, and there isn't more to it than that.

I spent 26 years in the Border Patrol, and I watched this playbook run a hundred times. Somebody runs from law enforcement, something bad happens, and within an hour there's a politician at a microphone holding a candle and blaming the agent. The speed never gets mentioned. The flight never gets mentioned. The fact that a simple traffic stop would have ended with a ride to a processing center and a court date never gets mentioned either.

The people commenting on these stops clearly never worked one, so I will. ICE doesn't chase at 100 mph as a hobby. Agents want the stop, the arrest, and the paperwork done before lunch. When a subject decides to turn a Honda into a rocket sled, that's the subject escalating, not the agent. Every second of that flight is a choice the driver made while officers behind him were trying to end it safely.

The math here is simple. If a man is traveling at over 100 mph and loses control of his vehicle, physics handles the rest. ICE didn't kill him. His own decision to flee did. That's a hard thing for a family to hear, and I don't envy them their grief. But grief doesn't entitle politicians to invent a federal homicide out of a highway crash.

The reason Democrats jump on stories like this is no mystery. Every dead illegal alien is a fundraising email and a cable news segment. The facts come out days later, after the narrative has already been printed, and the correction runs in six-point type on a page nobody reads. DHS issuing a same-week correction is the right move. It won't get a tenth of the coverage the accusation got, but it's on the record now.

I'll give the activists this much credit: they're disciplined. They never let a tragedy go to waste, and they never let a fact slow them down. If the alien had stopped the car, he'd be alive and in removal proceedings. Instead he's dead, and the people who told him enforcement was coming for his community bear more responsibility for that than any agent does.

The scoreboard: claim made, claim debunked, agents did their jobs. Man fleeing at triple-digit speeds, one vehicle crashed, zero officers at fault. Next.