White House article credits Trump immigration enforcement with reduced crime and drug trafficking, disputes Tim Walz

Tim Walz is the Democratic governor of Minnesota and a former U.S. congressman. In this dispute he is criticizing President Trump’s large-scale immigration enforcement operations—especially a federal ICE operation in Minnesota after an ICE officer fatally shot a woman—and he publicly argued there is “no verifiable evidence” these Trump immigration crackdowns are making America safer. His comments prompted the White House article attacking him and defending Trump’s policies.

The article itself names only two specific enforcement efforts and gives limited detail:

1. Florida operation

• Name: Operation Dirtbag (also described by DHS as part of “Operation Criminal Return”).
• Lead agency: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with state and local partners under 287(g) agreements.
• Place and scope: Statewide ICE enforcement surge across Florida targeting “illegal alien sex offenders.”
• Timing: DHS press release is dated Nov. 13, 2025; the White House article cites this as the Florida example where “150 illegal alien sex offenders” were arrested.

2. Chicago operation

• Name: “Operation Midway Blitz,” an ICE deportation crackdown in Illinois focused on Chicago.
• Lead agency: ICE/DHS, with additional federal law‑enforcement presence ordered by President Trump; discussion of possible National Guard deployment.
• Place and scope: Chicago and surrounding areas in Illinois, targeting people DHS labeled “criminal illegal aliens.”
• Timing: Announced by DHS on Sept. 8, 2025; contemporaneous news coverage through fall 2025 describes it as a multi‑week enforcement campaign.

The article also generically refers to “targeted immigration enforcement and crime prevention operations” in various cities but does not otherwise name those operations or jurisdictions.

Independent analysts and preliminary federal data—not the White House—are the main sources for the claim that 2025 saw the largest one‑year drop in U.S. homicides on record:

• Crime analyst Jeff Asher (AH Datalytics) told ABC News that based on his Real‑Time Crime Index, using data from about 550 law‑enforcement agencies, homicides in 2025 were expected to be down roughly 20% from 2024. He noted that even a more conservative estimate (16–17%) would still make 2025 “the largest one‑year drop ever recorded.”
• NPR, citing the same Real‑Time Crime Index covering nearly 600 jurisdictions, reported that murders fell by about 20% in 2025 compared with 2024.
• The Council on Criminal Justice’s mid‑year 2025 report on 42 cities found a 17% decline in homicides in the first half of 2025 vs. the first half of 2024, consistent with a very large year‑over‑year fall.
• The FBI’s final national 2025 crime report is not yet published, so these independent datasets and expert analyses are the current basis for the “largest one‑year drop” claim.

The arrests and deportations referenced in the article are carried out primarily by federal immigration agencies, often with local partners:

• U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a DHS agency, is the lead enforcement body responsible for arresting, detaining, and deporting people in the U.S. without lawful status. DHS’s own release on “Operation Dirtbag” in Florida specifies that ICE, working with state and local 287(g) law‑enforcement partners, arrested more than 150 “illegal alien sex offenders,” with over 230 “criminal illegal aliens” taken into custody overall.
• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) oversees ICE and frames these nationwide campaigns (e.g., “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago) as focused on “criminal illegal aliens,” while coordinating any broader federal law‑enforcement or National Guard involvement.
• Local and state law‑enforcement agencies participate through 287(g) agreements, which deputize certain local officers to perform limited federal immigration enforcement functions under ICE supervision.
• The article itself does not credit the U.S. Marshals Service or other specific federal police forces with the deportations; its language and the operations it cites point to ICE/DHS, supported by local police via 287(g) where applicable.

The White House article asserts that “fentanyl trafficking across the southern border has been slashed in half” but does not give a citation. The closest available quantitative measure is U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seizure data:

• USAFacts, using official CBP data, reports that between January and September 2025, authorities seized about 7,517 pounds of fentanyl at U.S. borders—about 55% less than by the same point in 2024. This is consistent with a rough “cut in half” of seizures.
• Other CBP‑based sources similarly show that fentanyl seizures at the border fell substantially in fiscal year 2025 compared with 2024, even as total drug seizures remained high.

However, seizures are an imperfect proxy for “trafficking”: a drop in seizures can reflect changes in smuggling methods, enforcement focus, or reporting, not necessarily a true halving of total fentanyl flow. No independent source verifies the exact causal claim that Trump’s policies themselves “slashed trafficking in half”; what can be verified is the approximate 50% decline in recorded seizures in 2025 vs. 2024.

The article claims that “70% of the 650,000+ illegal aliens deported by the Trump Administration since taking office have been charged with or convicted of crimes,” but it does not cite a specific data source, and no public, verifiable dataset currently confirms that exact figure for actual removals.

Relevant available information:

• ICE and DHS periodically publish statistics on “criminal noncitizens” in custody or on their non‑detained docket, but these counts are not the same as completed deportations. For example, a 2025 fact‑check of a related claim by a Trump border official noted that “nearly 650,000 criminal aliens were on the [non‑detained] docket” as of mid‑2024, not that they had been deported.
• ICE’s annual removal reports for recent years (covering both the prior administration and early months of Trump’s second term) break out the share of removals with criminal convictions or charges, but the cumulative 650,000+ figure cited in the article does not match any single, independently verifiable ICE publication available to date.

Given current public data, the specific assertion that “70% of 650,000+ deported” had criminal charges or convictions cannot be independently verified; it appears to be an unsubstantiated White House talking point rather than a documented statistic.

In the article, the term “illegal alien” is used repeatedly and pejoratively (e.g., “criminal illegal alien sex offenders,” “illegal aliens deported,” “criminal illegal aliens with no right to be here”) to describe non‑U.S. citizens who are present or working in the United States without lawful immigration status or who have violated the terms of their status. This is political language; federal agencies now more commonly use terms like “noncitizen” or “undocumented noncitizen,” although “alien” still appears in some statutes.

Legally relevant categories and processes behind the rhetoric include:

• Noncitizen / alien: U.S. immigration law (the Immigration and Nationality Act, INA) uses “alien” to mean any person who is not a citizen or national of the United States.
• Removability: People can be placed in removal (or deportation) proceedings if they entered without being admitted or paroled, overstayed or violated the terms of a visa, or have certain criminal convictions, immigration fraud findings, or other grounds of inadmissibility or deportability under the INA.
• Removal proceedings: ICE (under DHS) initiates cases by filing a Notice to Appear in immigration court (within the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review). An immigration judge then decides whether the person is removable and whether they qualify for relief (such as asylum, cancellation of removal, or adjustment of status).
• Orders of removal and deportation: If an immigration judge issues a final order of removal and any appeals are exhausted or waived, ICE can execute the order by physically removing the person from the U.S.

The White House article collapses these distinctions into the politicized label “illegal alien,” without explaining the underlying legal categories or due‑process steps that govern how people are actually ordered removed or deported.