**Notes**


7 Here, we discuss a few irregularities and discrepancies in these data. Although these five news releases were comparable to the pandemic-era discussion of COVID-19 contraband, a total of 28 out of the 175 news releases were customs-related in that they discussed some form of contraband, but they primarily discussed drug-related offenses of groups or individuals. Furthermore, we initially collected these 175 news releases in October 2020; in May 2021, however, ICE's website included only 170 news releases in this same time period.
