Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin pushed back hard on Representative Pramila Jayapal's claim that the majority of ICE arrests over the summer involved people who posed "no threat" to the country. He was right to push back, and the reason is sitting in plain sight in the way the numbers get counted.

Fox News covered the exchange, and it's worth reading in full, because Jayapal's talking point is the same one the open-borders crowd has been running for years. The line goes like this: most ICE arrests are of "non-criminal" illegal aliens, therefore enforcement is cruel and pointless. It falls apart the moment you know how the category is actually built.

Nobody on that side ever explains the counting. When ICE says an arrestee has "no criminal history," that means no criminal history on file in the United States. It does not mean the person is a Boy Scout. It means we don't have a rap sheet for him. An illegal alien who crossed the border last month and hasn't been caught doing anything since arrest day will show up in the data as non-criminal. So will a gang member whose records are back in El Salvador and never made it into our systems. The category is a paperwork designation, not a character reference.

There's also the definition problem, and Jayapal knows it. Every single person ICE arrests is in the country illegally. That's the job. Illegal entry is itself a violation of federal law, and under expedited removal and reinstatement of prior removal orders, a lot of these cases don't require a judge or a courtroom. Illegal reentry after a prior removal is a federal crime under 8 U.S.C. 1326. The statistics the open-borders crowd quotes are built to mislead, and the people quoting them are either fooled or doing the fooling on purpose.

Mullin didn't mince words, which I appreciate. I spent twenty-six years in the Border Patrol, and I sat through plenty of hearings where some congressman lectured us about enforcement being unnecessary. You learn to recognize the difference between a real question and a performance. This was a performance.

For anyone confused by the jargon flying around, an arrest works like this on the ground. ICE doesn't wander neighborhoods grabbing people at random. At-large arrests follow warrants. Jail arrests run through detainers, which are requests that local custody hold an illegal alien for up to 48 hours so ICE can pick him up. Some jurisdictions honor detainers. Sanctuary jurisdictions refuse, release the guy, and then act surprised when ICE has to go find him in the community instead of taking him into custody in a controlled setting. That's how you get the door-knocks the same politicians then complain about. You can't have it both ways, but they try.

The claim that the majority of arrests pose "no threat" also assumes threat means convicted violent criminal and nothing else. A man with a drunk driving conviction and no license who has been removed twice before is a threat. A drug trafficker who beat the charge on a technicality is a threat. The people making the "no threat" argument know all of this. They count on you not knowing it.

Scoreboard: Mullin 1, Jayapal 0. A talking point built on a paperwork category was never going to survive contact with somebody who reads the file.