Sad and outrageous incidents don’t paint the full picture

Joseph Weber

Decades ago, sci-fi writer Robert A. Heinlein put some powerful words into the mouth of one of his memorable characters, Zebadiah “Zeb” Jones. “You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic,” Jones said.

The line appeared in a story about a rebellion against a theocratic government that had taken hold of the United States, “If This Goes On—,” a story first published in 1940. It appears in Heinlein’s collection, “Revolt in 2100.”

I’m reminded of this by some fascinating exchanges on a family chat site. They point to the peculiar hold that the Trump Administration seems to have on a substantial chunk of the American public. They also underscore the power of propaganda.

In the family chat, a dear relative who supports many of the president’s anti-immigrant actions often replies to criticisms of Trumpian policies with examples of outrages committed by undocumented folks.

One, drawn from Fox News, refers to the death of an 8-year-old girl in Boise, Idaho, in a pickup truck crash. The driver, we’re told, was an “illegal alien released into the country by the Obama administration who was provided a driver’s license by a sanctuary state and was eventually ordered to be deported.”

Another outrage, from a New Jersey radio station, details the attempted-murder charges against a Venezuelan national in north Jersey, apparently after a pre-dawn fight. His unidentified victim, we’re told, was hospitalized with “non-life-threatening injuries.”

Perhaps the most unsettling, though, is a third one, a Facebook post by comedian Terrence K. Williams saying “Four MS-13 illegal aliens have been arrested in Maryland after they hacked a 14-year-old boy to death with a machete.” The comedian added: “This is why we stand with ICE. So violent criminals are removed before they destroy families.”

All these involve ugly events. To my relative, the incidents apparently prove how immigrants pose horrific threats to Americans and must be driven out at whatever cost. With each, I suspect, readers of a certain bent will nod, find confirmation for their beliefs, and will be thankful for Trump and ICE.

But let’s look more closely. In the first case, every fatal pickup truck crash is awful, of course. We have about 20,000 such crashes each year in the U.S. But how many, one wonders, involve undocumented drivers? How much more likely is it that the vast majority involve homegrown Americans?

And does the one terribly sad case involving a child prove that undocumented drivers pose an inordinate threat? Does that case prove anything, in fact, other than that it was one awful accident, one among many?

And then there’s the early-morning fight that led to a New Jersey woman’s hospitalization. Do we know anything, really, about this case? Were the parties related or involved with one another?

All across the U.S., nearly 70 women are shot to death each month by their domestic partners. Might this have been something like that? And is it relevant that this shooter was a Venezuelan national? Does it suggest that such immigrants are more dangerous than the far greater number of homegrown Americans involved in such killings?

As for the men who allegedly killed a 14-year-old, it’s not clear that the four suspects charged in the ghoulish case were immigrants or were members of MS-13. So far, all that the police have said is that the killing appears to be gang-related and the victim knew one of his assailants. All involved appear to be Latinos.

We don’t have all the facts, though that didn’t stop the comedian from jumping to conclusions. And, even if all those charged were undocumented, does that prove anything about how big a threat such folks are to non-gang Americans?

Awful as such things are, gangsters of all nationalities have been killing one another for decades. For years, the Mafia made an industry of this and yet Italians haven’t been targets of mass deportations.

These cases remind me of an adage those of us in journalism education drive home to students: “the plural of anecdote is not data.” In other words, you can usually find cases to make just about any point you want to make, often with a potent emotional punch.

Fox News and anecdote-besotted politicians such as Trump know too well how to manipulate audiences with such cases.

But the question we must always ask is “do the data really support that point?”

Despite the cases my relative cited, numerous studies have shown that undocumented immigrants are involved far less in crime than American-born people are, for instance. One Department of Justice study, focusing on Texas, found that “undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.”

As The Brennan Center reported last May, “the arrival of record numbers of immigrants at the United States–Mexico border over the past two years has not corresponded with an overall increase in crime in so-called “blue” cities where many of the recent arrivals have settled. In most places, the opposite has happened — crime, including violent crime, has trended downward (other than larceny and a small increase in robbery) after peaking across the country in 2020.”

Of course, the exchanges on our family chat were generated by the murder of Renee Good and the presence of nearly 3,000 ICE agents in Minneapolis. Each day, it seems, we are confronted with more examples of outrages not by immigrants, but by such agents.

Minneapolis residents opposed to what they see as a federal invasion of their city document by phone illegal raids on homes, harassment of people on the streets, rousting of innocent citizens in stores. Our Facebook feeds are filled daily with such imagery. And journalists are reporting on the fear that keeps innocents in hiding, afraid even to go to the grocery store.

Yes, these incidents – numerous as they are — are anecdotes, too. We don’t yet have the data to show how pervasive the abuses have been. Indeed, while Homeland Security officials say they’ve made some 3,000 arrests so far, we also don’t know how many involve violent criminals or just innocents whose only offense was fleeing into the U.S., or even those protesting the presence of masked armed men on their streets.

But the anecdotes of abuses do take on more power when elected leaders such as the mayor of Minneapolis, the state’s attorney general and the governor condemn the presence of the uninvited federal forces – and sue to have them removed. They do appear to represent a pattern, even if we don’t have the full picture yet.

And, when some of these leaders are subjected to Justice Department harassment, the pattern grows even darker.

Thanks to social media and the well-honed anti-immigrant propaganda spouted by Washington officials, the sad, broader truths about how the ordinary lives of Americans are being upended are being obfuscated. This has been the case in cities ranging from Chicago and Los Angeles to Minneapolis and, now, to smaller cities in Maine, where the ICE operation is called “Catch of Day.”

Maine, as it happens, has been a popular haven for Somalis, much as Minnesota has been. So ICE seems to see it as a target-rich environment.

A government official quoted by NBC did not say how many arrests were made during the first day of the Maine operation. But in a statement, she said officers had “arrested illegal aliens convicted of aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and endangering the welfare of a child.” She pointed to four examples among those arrested, though she offered few details that would provide fuller pictures of their cases.

Already, however, local officials are wary that Mainers may face the same sorts of excesses that those in Minnesota have suffered.

Carl Sheline, Lewiston’s mayor, condemned the latest ICE action, for instance. “These masked men with no regard for the rule of law are causing long-term damage to our state and to our country,” he said, as The Washington Post reported. “Lewiston stands for the dignity of all people who call Maine home.”

Gov. Janet Mills also had sharp words for the Trump Administration.

“To the federal government, I say this: If your plan is to come here to be provocative and to undermine the civil rights of Maine residents, do not be confused — those tactics are not welcome here,” she said. “Maine knows what good law enforcement looks like …. They don’t wear a mask to shield their identities, and they don’t arrest people to fill quotas.”

Soon, we might expect, we’ll see more examples of shoddy law enforcement. Will Americans see the broader picture or will they fall for the propaganda? Will they be suckered by cases that appeal to their prejudices or will they use their sense of logic?