What is the definition of criminal? Technically, anyone found guilty of breaking the criminal code is classified as a criminal. Of course, there are degrees of lawbreaking, with lesser violations generally classified as misdemeanors and more serious violations as felonies. However, regardless of the degree of a law’s violation, all law-breaking is a criminal offense.

When it comes to the issue of illegal immigration, the way it has been framed and covered by much of the Leftmedia and referenced by Democrat politicians has been inherently disingenuous.

That dishonesty is evident in the attempt to conflate the criminal act of illegal immigration with the perfectly ethical, acceptable, and law-abiding act of legal immigration. The Trump administration’s immigration law enforcement action has not been one of targeting legal immigrants out of some supposed, but factually vacuous, claim of racist motivations. On the contrary, it is motivated by a commitment to enforce our nation’s laws, which is in turn a direct expression of concern for protecting and supporting the welfare of the American people, no matter their ethnic makeup.

A recent example of this disingenuous conflation dynamic at play comes courtesy of CBS News with a report claiming that “less than 14% of those arrested by ICE in Trump’s 1st year back in office had violent criminal records.”

CBS gives this conflation game away in the very first paragraph of its article, which reads, “Less than 14% of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in President Trump’s first year back in the White House had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security document obtained by CBS News.”

Notice that CBS intentionally fails to note that these 400,000 “immigrants” who have been arrested by ICE are all illegal. None of them has a legal right to reside in the U.S., regardless of any other crimes they may or may not have committed. Under the letter of the law, all these illegal aliens are criminals. The only question beyond that first and most important classification is the degree of their criminality.

However, due to the Trump administration’s repeated assertion that ICE has been targeting the “worst of the worst” when it comes to illegal aliens, CBS aims to expose this claim as false.

The legacy media outlet claims to have obtained Department of Homeland Security documentation that has previously not been available to the public, and suggests that the data shows that a small percentage of those illegal aliens ICE has arrested are “dangerous and violent criminals.”

CBS then proceeds to classify what it considers to be “violent crimes” versus “nonviolent” crimes, which exposes the media outfit to ridicule over what it apparently considers to be non-serious criminal offenses.

For example, CBS apparently classifies drunk driving, dealing in or possession of dangerous drugs, and weapons offenses as “nonviolent” crimes. Of course, CBS does not dispute the fact that any of these crimes are serious and dangerous enough to earn a perpetrator time in prison. Each of those crimes could also claim an American life.

No, the big takeaway for CBS is that of the more than 400,000 illegal aliens ICE has arrested, almost 40% of them are supposedly only guilty of breaking our immigration laws. Furthermore, while CBS does acknowledge that the other 60% have been convicted of or accused of having “other crimes,” it attempts to frame the vast majority of these as somehow insignificant and not dangerous to the American public. Does CBS believe that identity theft is just a minor issue that has little impact on American citizens? What about welfare fraud? (Ask Tim Walz about that.) With our national debt ballooning every year, one would think that caring for our citizens should come before those who have no legal right to be in our country.

The problem is not the Trump administration’s framing of its immigration enforcement action. ICE is not guilty of lawlessness; it is ensuring that our laws are obeyed and respected, and that can only be assured when ICE enforces those laws.

Those individuals illegally living in the U.S. should live in fear of deportation, for they are violating our laws by living here without legal permission. Those foreign nationals who are residing in the U.S. legally have nothing to fear, as ICE is not targeting and arresting them.