There has been a sweeping series of raids on what the WaPo and the left insist on calling “undocumented immigrants” (implying they should be thought of merely as valid immigrants who somehow carelessly misplaced their papers):

U.S. immigration authorities arrested hundreds of undocumented immigrants in at least a half-dozen states this week in a series of raids that marked the first large-scale enforcement of President Trump’s Jan. 25 order to crack down on the estimated 11 million immigrants living here illegally.

Officials said the raids targeted known criminals, but they also netted some immigrants without criminal records, an apparent departure from similar enforcement waves during the Obama administration. Last month, Trump substantially broadened the scope of who the Department of Homeland Security can target to include those with minor offenses or no convictions at all.

Trump has pledged to deport as many as 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal records.

So, this involves hundreds. The vast majority are criminals. A smaller number (unspecified) are guilty of “minor” offenses (also unspecified) or “no convictions” (no explanation of how many fall into that last category).

We are no doubt supposed to be alarmed and outraged over this. I wonder how many people really are.

More:

Gillian Christensen, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said they were part of “routine” immigration enforcement actions.

Christensen said the raids, which began Monday and ended Friday at noon, found undocumented immigrants from a dozen Latin American countries. “We’re talking about people who are threats to public safety or a threat to the integrity of the immigration system,” she said, noting that the majority of those detained were serious criminals, including some who were convicted of murder and domestic violence.

The article continues:

That undocumented immigrants with no criminal records were arrested and could potentially be deported sent a shock wave through immigrant communities nationwide amid concerns that the U.S. government could start going after law-abiding people.

“This is clearly the first wave of attacks under the Trump administration, and we know this isn’t going to be the only one,” Cristina Jimenez, executive director of United We Dream, an immigrant youth organization, said Friday during a conference call with immigration advocates.

Note the language. The first paragraph in that quote is the WaPo’s, which characterizes illegal immigrants without criminal records as “law-abiding people.” And yet illegal immigration can hardly be described as abiding by the law, can it? Then in the second paragraph we have an immigration activist characterizing these lawful sweeps—whether the targets are criminal or non-criminal illegal aliens—as “attacks.”

See how that language thing goes? They are undocumented, law-abiding people attacked by our government under Trump.

Here’s more:

David Marin, ICE’s field director in the Los Angeles area, said in a conference call with reporters Friday that 75 percent of the approximately 160 people detained in the operation this week had felony convictions; the rest had misdemeanors or were in the United States illegally…

“Dangerous criminals who should be deported are being released into our communities,” Marin said.

To me, that last sentence seems to be describing the true outrage.

So, let’s see what seems to have occurred: in Los Angeles, one of the centers for illegal immigrants in this country, the raid involved 160 people, 120 of whom are convicted felons. That’s not a particularly large number, considering the size of the population of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles: about 1 person in 10. The remaining 40 people detained in this raid had misdemeanor convictions or were here illegally, but we don’t know how many were in each of those categories, what their misdemeanors were, and whether they will in fact be deported. And the WaPo isn’t telling.

Here are some of the differences between crackdowns under Obama and this one:

A government aide familiar with the raids said it is possible that the predominantly daytime operations ”” a departure from the Obama administration’s night raids ”” meant to “send a message to the community that the Trump deportation force is in effect.”

Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, an immigrant advocacy group, said that the wave of detentions harks back to the George W. Bush administration, when workplace raids to sweep up all undocumented workers were common.

So, this is actually less draconian than what happened under Bush? The article goes on to add that for Obama’s first term anyway, raids were “more aggressive” than for any previous president. These facts occur way way down in the story, of course. That’s also where we read the following:

A DHS official confirmed that while immigration agents were targeting criminals, given the broader range defined by Trump’s executive order, they also were sweeping up noncriminals in the vicinity who were found to be lacking documentation. It was unclear how many of the people detained would have been excluded under Obama’s policy.

Let me add that it’s unclear how many of the detained people fall into the non-criminal category in the first place. And let me translate that last sentence of the quote: It’s even possible that Obama might have done the same thing, but we’re not saying.

Federal immigration officials, as well as activists, said that the majority of those detained were adult men, and that no children were taken into custody.

The illegal immigrant community is reported as being panicked, and I have little doubt that is true. Why shouldn’t they be? Trump was elected on the promise of cracking down more on them, and people are learning that he intends to keep a lot of his promises. The activists are trying to stir up the panic, of course—that’s what they do.