One of the most striking examples highlighted by the White House is Antonio Israel Lazo-Quintanilla, a Salvadoran national identified by authorities as an 18th Street Gang member.
Photographs of Lazo-Quintanilla show a prominent “666” tattoo across his forehead.
More importantly, Salvadoran authorities reportedly placed him on a most-wanted list over allegations involving aggravated homicide, extortion and drug-related crimes.
Yet because his criminal history inside the United States was reportedly limited to driving without a license, reporting about ICE arrest statistics placed him in the category of immigrants without a U.S. criminal record.
That distinction has now become the heart of a bitter fight between the Trump administration and two of the country’s biggest newspapers.
White House Challenges ‘Noncriminal’ Label
The Washington Post reported that ICE was detaining rapidly increasing numbers of immigrants without criminal records, while The New York Times similarly focused on the rising number of ICE arrests involving people categorized as having no criminal record.
The White House responded by releasing examples of detainees it says demonstrate why that statistical description can give readers an incomplete picture.
Lazo-Quintanilla was only one of them.
Another was Danny Granados-Garcia, a Salvadoran national identified by the administration as an MS-13 member.
Granados-Garcia was reportedly wanted in El Salvador in connection with the murder of a pastor before ICE agents arrested him in Waterbury, Connecticut, in March.
Then there is Josue Saul Garcia-Lopez.
According to the administration, Garcia-Lopez is also an MS-13 member and was arrested in Virginia in May. Authorities in El Salvador allegedly wanted him over criminal activity involving extortion and robbery.
Fredy Alexander Lopez Lara, a Honduran national, was another case cited by the White House.
Although he allegedly lacked the kind of U.S. criminal record reflected in the media’s statistics, authorities said an international warrant sought him for homicide in Honduras.
Those cases raise an obvious problem with treating “no U.S. criminal record” as synonymous with “noncriminal.”
Child-Crime and Murder Suspects Also Highlighted
The administration also pointed to Salvador Suazo-Garcia, who legally entered the United States in May 2021.
According to the White House, Suazo-Garcia was wanted by Mexican authorities for alleged lewd and lascivious acts involving a child.
His lawful entry into the country did not erase the foreign allegations against him. But under a dataset centered on U.S. criminal records, he could nevertheless fall into the supposedly “noncriminal” population.
Two brothers arrested in Texas provided another dramatic example.
Pedro Luis Ortiz-Mendez and Jose Vicente Ortiz-Mendez were reportedly wanted in Mexico in connection with multiple killings. The allegations cited by the administration included one victim being shot and another being attacked with a machete.
Again, the White House argues that simply looking at convictions or charges accumulated within the United States fails to capture the seriousness of such cases.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis blasted the coverage and directly challenged the media outlets involved.
“Why does the mainstream media continue to peddle false narratives protecting criminal illegal aliens?”
Fox News Digital reported that neither The Washington Post nor The New York Times responded to its request for comment.
One Definition Changes the Entire Story
The disagreement ultimately comes down to methodology.
A person can have no recorded criminal conviction in the United States while simultaneously being wanted by authorities in another country for a violent offense.
That distinction matters enormously when immigration-arrest data are presented to the public.
Someone accused of homicide overseas does not suddenly become harmless simply because the alleged killing happened outside American jurisdiction.
Likewise, an alleged gang member wanted by foreign authorities for extortion does not become an ordinary law-abiding immigrant merely because he managed to avoid a U.S. conviction before ICE found him.
The administration says the problem extends beyond a handful of headline-grabbing examples.
DHS has said roughly 70 percent of ICE arrests involve individuals convicted of or charged with crimes in the United States. The administration argues that even the remaining population can include foreign fugitives, suspected gang members, people flagged internationally and others accused of serious wrongdoing abroad.
That means two statements can technically coexist: an immigrant can have “no U.S. criminal record” while being wanted for a serious crime somewhere else.
But presenting only the first half of that equation can leave readers with a radically different impression.
The ‘Noncriminal’ Narrative Faces a Reality Check
For months, critics of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies have portrayed ICE’s expanded operations as increasingly sweeping up otherwise law-abiding immigrants.
The cases released by the White House complicate that narrative.
The administration is effectively accusing major media organizations of relying on a definition that makes dangerous foreign fugitives sound indistinguishable from people who have never been accused of a crime anywhere.
And Lazo-Quintanilla may be the administration’s most visually unforgettable example.
The “666” tattoo across his forehead is eye-catching, but tattoos are not proof of criminal conduct. The far more consequential issue is the government’s claim that he is an 18th Street Gang member wanted by Salvadoran authorities for aggravated homicide, extortion and drug offenses.
If those allegations and warrants are accurate, describing him merely as someone without a U.S. criminal record leaves out information that most readers would consider essential.
That is the larger battle now unfolding over ICE statistics.
The argument is no longer simply about how many people the agency is arresting.
It is about who those people actually are — and whether the label “noncriminal” tells Americans the whole story.
