“Countless news stories have amplified fears that under Trump, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are wildly violating basic rights,” said John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. “But the numbers tell a very different story.”
Lott first highlighted in a recent article the total number of arrests since Trump’s inauguration through the end of November: 595,000 migrants living in the country illegally, a figure he described as “extraordinary.” He also noted that 605,000 were deported.
According to Lott, the media often spread incomplete or distorted figures (and sometimes not even, but appeal to generalities such as “many”) that have an impact on the image Americans have of ICE’s work.
“No federal agency is perfect. In immigration enforcement, as in all law enforcement operations, mistakes will be made,” he asserts. “But the media’s lack of perspective on the data, and its refusal to put the numbers in context, is putting a match to an explosive public debate.”
Here are the main points he disputes from the mainstream media: . . .
John Lott, the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and a former senior adviser for research and statistics in the Department of Justice, took a look at the facts behind the hype and found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents under Trump make fewer mistakes than in the era of former President Barack Obama.
Lott wrote an opinion piece for the New York Post examining a media allegation that 170 Americans were detained by ICE, which also claimed that 32 people died in its custody last year.
Lott also noted that NPR, which Trump tried to have defunded, alleged that “many” American citizens “have been mistaken” for illegal aliens, and that there’s “a long history of immigration agencies not having a good track record.’”
But according to Lott, of the 170 U.S. citizens detained by ICE, 130 were arrested for interfering with ICE operations. Of the other 40, he wrote, only half were held by more than a day.
That comes to 20 people out of 595,000 arrested, he noted.
Lott calculated an error rate of 0.0067 percent for ICE during Trump’s first year, which comes to one error out of every 14,925 arrests.
Lott then noted that in Obama’s final two years, ICE had “263 mistaken arrests, 54 mistaken detentions (book-ins), and four mistaken removals.”
In looking at detentions alone during that portion of the Obama years, ICE’s error rate was 0.0225 percent, or a mistake every 4,444 arrests, which is about “3.36 times higher than under Trump.”
Lott also examined the claim of 32 deaths in ICE custody. Noting that data is not always available for perfect comparison, Lott said there were 56 deaths in ICE custody across Obama’s eight years in office. Using available detention numbers, that translates to a rate of 0.007 percent, which meant one illegal immigrant died for every 14,314 detainees. . . .
But Hawaii only presumptively bans carrying by a concealed carry permit holder. These are people that the state has already determined to be peaceful, law-abiding citizens who should be able to carry a concealed firearm. There is nothing inherently dangerous about carrying a firearm, and as John Lott has demonstrated, concealed carry permit holders are extremely law-abiding, being convicted of violent crimes even less frequently than off-duty police officers. And it beggars belief to think that the violent criminals who are dangerous with firearms will be affected at all by Hawaii’s law. . . .
A former Justice Department statistician used left-wing media’s own figures against them to reveal that former President Barack Obama’s error rate while deporting illegal immigrants was nearly three times that of President Donald Trump.
John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and a former DOJ senior adviser for research and statistics, published an op-ed in the New York Post on Wednesday that used figures from ProPublica and NPR to show the double standard surrounding the Left’s reactions to recent deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. . . .
Staff, “Obama’s ICE Error Rate Was 3X Trump’s,” Headline USA, January 25, 2026.
In a new op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Crime Prevention Research Center President John Lott argues that Hawaii is blatantly trying to dodge the Constitution.
The case, Wolford v. Lopez, challenges a Hawaii law passed after the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision.
That ruling said states can’t force people to prove a special “need” for a concealed-carry permit.
In other words, the right to carry a firearm is a right, not a favor from the government.
Instead of complying in good faith, Hawaii and several other blue states took a different approach.
They made it legal to carry in theory, but banned it in so many places that there was almost no reason to do so.
Traditionally, a person with a valid permit could carry in most businesses open to the public unless the owner said no.
Hawaii reversed that.
Under its law, carrying is banned by default in places like grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, and malls unless the owner gives clear permission.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law, claiming there is a “national tradition” of banning guns on private property unless the owner explicitly allows them.
Lott says that history simply doesn’t exist.
There were no broad laws in 1791, when the Second Amendment was adopted, or in 1868, when it was applied to the states, that banned lawful carry in everyday businesses.
Even so, Hawaii’s attorney general claims the law fits historical traditions because guns were “not commonly carried in public.”
Attorneys general from 17 states and Washington, D.C. told the court that many major retailers already ban firearms.
Lott points out that several of the stores they cite, like Walmart and Walgreens, are talking about open carry, not concealed carry. They’re not the same thing.
The research used to defend the law is shaky, too.
One brief claims people carrying guns are more than four times as likely to be shot.
The catch is that the data lumps law-abiding permit holders together with criminals who are carrying illegally.
And those are two very different groups.
About 21 million Americans hold concealed-carry permits, and millions more carry legally in constitutional carry states.
Permit holders are among the most law-abiding citizens there are.
In Florida and Texas, for example, permit holders lose their licenses for gun violations at rates measured in thousandths of a percent.
Critics say more guns in public spaces increase risk and confusion during emergencies.
But the data shows that armed civilians rarely interfere with police, and almost never harm bystanders.
If the Court sides with the plaintiffs, it could put the breaks on “gun-free” zones that exist more on paper than in practice. . . .
While the FBI’s public reporting often minimizes the role of armed citizens, independent analysis suggests they are a vital component of public safety. Between 2014 and 2021, the FBI claimed only 4.4% of active shooters were thwarted by armed citizens.[5, 6, 7] However, an investigation by the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) identified massive reporting errors, such as misclassifying armed civilians as “security guards”, and concluded that armed citizens actually thwarted 34.4% of those incidents.
In locations where citizens were legally permitted to carry (excluding “gun-free zones”) armed citizens stopped a staggering 51.5% of active shooters. The data further shows that concealed carry permit holders are remarkably safe; in 180 analyzed cases of intervention, there was only one instance of a permit holder accidentally shooting a bystander.
The efficacy of firearms extends beyond active intervention to proactive deterrence. Criminologist John Lott’s “More Guns, Less Crime” thesis posits that when more law-abiding citizens are armed, the risk to criminals increases exponentially. This creates a “minefield effect” where the criminal cannot know which potential victim can offer lethal resistance. . . .
Looking over their wish list, virtually unchanged since 2021, it is clear the Brady Bunch knows absolutely nothing about the realities of law enforcement. According to an article posted in January 2021 by Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center, the other leading gun control addicts are equally clueless. . . .
The Crime Prevention Research Center reported in December the latest figures on active concealed carry licenses and permits hover at approximately 20.88 million. This doesn’t count the millions of unlicensed citizens now legally carrying in 29 states which have adopted what is generically called “Constitutional Carry.” . . .
Skip Coryell: “[John Lott] is probably the gun community’s foremost authority on statistics.”
Skip Coryell, “John Lott’s data on ICE agent performance,” The Home Defense Show, January 25, 2026.
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