Right-wing media have worked symbiotically with President Donald Trump’s administration to manufacture false media narratives of immigrant criminality and to justify subsequent crackdowns on those communities. A recent segment on Fox Business’ Mornings With Maria Bartiromo perfectly illustrates this dynamic, as guest host Cheryl Casone enabled a Homeland Security spokesperson to uncritically spread a baseless statistic to bolster the administration’s claim that it’s pursuing the so-called “worst of the worst.”

On August 4, Casone introduced Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin by discussing legal challenges Trump has faced in carrying out his mass deportation plans.

“What is the path forward here from the legal side, from the attorneys at DHS, to make sure that these deportations continue to be carried out as the American public had asked for?” Casone said.

(This framing is already misleading — in mid-July, polls from CNN and CBS News both found that a majority of respondents oppose the administration’s increased deportation program.)

After assuring the Fox Business’ audience that Trump’s targeting of immigrants had nothing to do with “racial animus,” McLaughlin moved on to what has become a common administration talking point to claim Trump’s policies “are focused on criminality.” 

(Meanwhile, DHS recently asked the Supreme Court to allow ICE agents to use factors like speaking Spanish or working in construction as a partial basis for reasonable suspicion that a person is in the country without authorization.)

“Seventy percent of those illegal aliens who have been arrested under the Trump administration either have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges,” McLaughlin said. “So we are focused on getting people like MS-13 gang members, Tren de Aragua, terrorists, murderers, rapists — the worst of the worst out of this country.” 

“We will keep on going, flooding the zone in sanctuary cities, and going after the worst of the worst,” she added.

The data point that McLaughlin cited — which Casone didn’t challenge — appears to have first been used in a DHS press release on June 26. DHS has used the statistic in at least seven press releases since then, and Trump “border czar” Tom Homan — the most frequent administration official to appear on the Fox networks since Trump's inauguration — has repeated it numerous times across right-wing media. 

As Media Matters previously reported, the statistic appears to be false based on independent sources that collect federal data. 

According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which is frequently cited in media and legal publications for collecting government data, “71.1% [of detainees] held in ICE detention have no criminal conviction according to data current as of July 27, 2025. Many of those convicted committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations.” TRAC further notes that just 24% of ICE detainees had pending criminal charges as of July 13. 

Reports from CBS News and The Associated Press have found comparable numbers.

When Homan has recently claimed that 70% of ICE arrestees are criminals, he has sometimes added that the remaining 30% are “national security threats.” This figure appears to be the product of his own imagination. In some of statements, he has lumped in immigrants with final orders of removal alongside so-called terrorists and gang members to pad his statistic. 

A CBS News report last month found that since the beginning of Trump’s second term, “3,256 of the more than 100,000 people removed were known or suspected gang members or terrorists.” That’s about 3% — not 30% — and databases that purport to list “terrorists” or “gang members” are notoriously inaccurate. 

A news outlet that was interested in giving its audience reliable information might include any of that context when interviewing a Trump administration immigration official, but that's not the role Fox was created to serve.