Not Necessarily Flimflam

Of Karl Rove's Aspen talk, I wrote:

Some of it was flimflam: For instance, he simultaneously argued that a rising number of apprehensions on the border means that enforcement is working, and that a falling number of apprehensions of Brazilians means that a particular enforcement program, aimed at Other Than Mexicans (OTMs), is working as well. (Typically, as Rove no doubt knows, a rising number of apprehensions tends to mean that even more are slipping through, a principle that also holds in drug enforcement.)

Today, I got a clarification from none other than Rove himself: He was touting the number of detentions being high, not the number of arrests; arrests have gone down because of better security, he told me, while detentions have stayed up because we're doing less catch and release, and more catch, detain, and deport with non-Mexicans. And sure enough, today's Washington Times reports that arrests along the border have dropped by 24 percent this year. So score one for the Architect.