'An Honesty problem': Analyst says DHS credibility sunk by ‘remarkable rate’ of falsehoods

The Department of Homeland Security and its leader “do not deserve the benefit of the doubt,” according to MS NOW analyst Philip Bump, who argued in a searing op-ed that the agency and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem have developed an “honesty problem.”

“You cannot trust the Department of Homeland Security,” Bump wrote Friday, citing data and public misstatements under the Trump administration. He told readers that his conclusion “seems like a political statement, but it isn’t.”

“It is a recommendation rooted in 12 months of presentations and claims from Homeland Security officials and agents — claims that have been proven false at a remarkable rate,” he said.

The pattern, Bump noted, began early in President Donald Trump’s second term, as DHS repeatedly claimed ICE agents were targeting dangerous criminals. In reality, Bump wrote, data later showed immigrants with no criminal record made up more arrests than those with convictions. ICE detainees without convictions or pending charges surged from 842 in December 2024 to 21,892 by November 2025 – a roughly 2,500% increase, the data analyst wrote.

“When the Cato Institute’s David Bier used data from DHS to report that only 5% of ICE detainees have convictions for violent crimes, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin declared on social media that the pie chart he used to present the analysis was ‘made up,’ with ‘no legitimate data behind it,’” according to Bump. When shown the DHS data, she did not respond, Bump pointed out.

The MS NOW columnist went on to recount multiple similar incidents, including false claims about a U.S. citizen detained by ICE and the killing in Minneapolis this week of Renee Good, which DHS officials labeled as “domestic terrorism” despite video evidence disputing those claims – which have been repeated by others in the MAGA administration.

“What this means,” Bump concluded Friday, “is that the skepticism one ought to bring to any pronouncement of Trump should similarly be applied to those who work for and defend him. Particularly when — as in the case of the Department of Homeland Security — those officials have repeatedly been caught in fabrications of their own.”