The federal government says Operation Country Roads, a statewide immigration sweep in West Virginia, resulted in 650 arrests of dangerous criminals. ICE's own records tell a different story.

According to a report by the ACLU of West Virginia and investigative news site Dragline, the actual number of arrests was 593, not 650. The gap was created in part by counting detainees transferred from Pennsylvania as West Virginia arrests. More importantly, three out of four people arrested had no prior criminal record. The operation was publicly justified as a crackdown on child sex abusers and drug offenders. The data does not support that claim.

Federal judges agreed. U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin and other federal judges ordered the immediate release of multiple detainees during the operation. West Virginia's already crowded jails filled up, raising questions about whether the sweep was compromising public safety rather than enhancing it.

Eli Baumwell, director of the ACLU of West Virginia, put it plainly: "This illustrates that there's propaganda, that there's misinformation going on about what was actually going on and who was actually arrested."

We are calling on U.S. Attorney Moore Capito to publicly correct the arrest figures and release a full accounting of who was detained, on what basis, and how many had prior criminal records. We are also calling on Congress to exercise its oversight authority and investigate whether federal law enforcement misrepresented the scope and targets of Operation Country Roads to the American public.

Inflating arrest numbers and overstating criminal histories is not public safety. It is a misuse of federal authority. The record should be corrected.

Sign to demand accountability for Operation Country Roads.