Critics expressed alarm at what they considered misleading
data presented without context. They called it an attempt to misuse law
enforcement agencies to advance a political agenda in opposition to
immigration. Several government watchdog and civil liberties groups sued the
two agencies, seeking a retraction or correction under the Information Quality
Act. The agencies refused. Now, the Justice Department has told the groups
it will not retract or correct the document. Rather, “in future reports, the
department can strive to minimize the potential for misinterpretation,” said
DOJ official Michael Allen. It was a rare DOJ admission that its reporting
may have misled the public. One flaw the Justice Department acknowledged
was the report’s assertion that between 2003 and 2009, immigrants were
convicted of 69,929 sex offenses, which “in most instances constitutes
gender-based violence against women.” Actually, the nearly 70,000 offenses
spanned a period from 1955 to 2010 — 55 years, not six; the data covered arrests,
not convictions; and one arrest could be for multiple offenses. Critics
decried the report’s inclusion of eight “illustrative examples” of foreign-born
individuals out of a pool of 402 convicted of international terrorism. Allen
wrote that, “On reconsideration, the department acknowledges that a focus on
eight seemingly similar ‘illustrative examples’ from a list of more than 400
convictions could cause some readers of the report to question its
objectivity.”
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