Honesty and Facts
To the Editor:
Glynis Tietjen’s response to my last letter confirms what I suspected: she is remarkably comfortable presenting supposed common sense as a substitute for verifiable facts. While she claims to avoid fake news by sticking to reputable sources, her latest letter is once again a laundry list of debunked talking points and basic mathematical errors.
First, let’s address her confusion regarding per capita crime rates. Ms. Tietjen suggests that undocumented immigrants only appear to commit less crime because there are fewer of them. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how statistics work. The studies I cited from the Cato Institute, the Department of Justice, and the American Immigration Council use per capita rates. This means they compare the number of crimes committed per 100,000 people in each group. Even when you account for the population difference, native-born U.S. citizens are still incarcerated at significantly higher rates than undocumented immigrants. Common sense is great, but math is just better and a lot more reliable.
Next, the “300,000 lost children” claim remains her most egregious falsehood. This figure, pulled from a 2024 DHS Inspector General report, refers to missing paperwork, not missing children. That same report noted that the government had not yet issued notices to appear in court for these children. It did not say they were lost in the system or trafficked. In fact, a significant portion of the period covered in that report occurred during the previous Trump administration.
Furthermore, her attempt to downplay the “ripped from their parents” reality is offensive to the truth. In 2018, the Zero Tolerance policy was a deliberate choice to separate families as a deterrent.According to the American Immigration Council, the government failed to track these families, leaving hundreds of children effectively orphaned by the state because the administration lost the records. Comparing this deliberate policy to a U.S. citizen going to jail for a crime is a false equivalency that ignores the fact that our own legal system has protocols for child placement that the 2018 border policy ignored.
Finally, Ms. Tietjen’s claim that murder rates are at their lowest in over 100 years thanks to the current administration is peak fiction. FBI and Council on Criminal Justice data shows that the historic drop in homicides (a record 21% decline) happened throughout 2024 and 2025.. get this... under the Biden-Harris administration. Claiming credit for a yearslong downward trend that reached historic lows before the current administration took office is the definition of alternative facts.. aka, fiction.
Ms. Tietjen, you say it is shameful to suggest you are dishonest. If you don’t want your honesty questioned, stop providing our community with easily disproven information. Honesty and facts do indeed matter; it’s a shame you haven’t used any yet.