Report finds errors in White House “Alien Arrest” tracker
Article excerpt
The Ohio Immigrant Alliance found that data on the White House's "Aliens" site is "inaccurate and unreliable."
A report from an Ohio immigrant rights advocacy group on Tuesday found errors and discrepancies in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest data that the White House claimed to display live on its new “Aliens” arrest tracking site.
In one example in the report, the Ohio Immigrant Alliance found that the White House site underreports arrests in Ohio by nearly 55% compared to other government data, despite covering a longer period of time, and obscures immigrants’ criminal history. The organization cross-analyzed Immigration and Customs Enforcement data provided to the Deportation Data Project with the data displayed on the White House site to generate its findings.
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“Interestingly, the site only underreports ICE arrests nationwide by 0.05%, suggesting that it overreports arrests in other states in order to achieve its closer to accurate national figures,” the report said, declaring the site “inaccurate and unreliable.”
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The White House launched the webpage in May 2026, billing it as a live map of active immigration arrests across the country that pulls from ICE data. The site, which is space and UFO themed, mockingly compares immigrants in the country with extraterrestrial beings and features a counter labeled “encounters” that suggests it tracks the number of immigrant arrests. A May WIRED analysis found that “the figure does not correspond to any enforcement total published by immigration authorities and is roughly seven times larger than the actual ICE arrest count since January 2025.”
“Mark Twain said there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. This website contains all three,” Lynn Tramonte, Ohio Immigrant Alliance’s executive director, said in a statement. “The American people deserve truth from our government, not gaslighting. Our report reveals, in painstaking detail, why this government simply cannot be trusted.”
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