Feeling overwhelmed by the onslaught of bad news and scuttlebutt about detentions and “mass” deportations? Join the club. Or even better: Don’t.

From this vantage point— roughly ten days into the second Trump presidency— too many people are feeding into the frenzy by parroting half-truths or outright falsehoods about “reports” of federal agents rounding up people in city neighborhoods.

It just flat-out isn’t happening here. At least, not yet.

Yes, there were arrests made in East Boston last week. According to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office here in Boston, there was a handful of targeted arrests made on Jan. 22 by agents, including that of a Haitian national and a second man, a Honduran national who has been deported before and now stands accused of rape and assaults here in Massachusetts.

People like this should be taken off the streets and get their day in court. And, according to the local and federal authorities and observers we’ve spoken with in recent days, what happened last week is precisely the kind of law enforcement that happens routinely, no matter who happens to be in power in Washington, D.C.

Go back through the ICE website and see for yourself. The Boston ICE office makes arrests and detains people for deportation hearings all the time. It keeps a tally and even posts images of the accused if they are facing charges or have been convicted of crimes domestically. (We are told that ICE blurs the faces of some detainees, typically when they are facing charges in an international jurisdiction.)

There may, in fact, be more resources pumped into pushing up the arrest “quotas” for local ICE field offices coming in the near future. But all available evidence suggests that the volume and pace of federal enforcement in Boston and surrounding communities to date is not significantly changed since Trump took office.

Boston Police-led warrant arrests— frequently documented by local media and the BPD’s own information outlet— can very easily be mistaken for a federal “raid.” And those, too, happen almost every day somewhere in Boston and have for many years.

What has changed very recently is the tone and propagandizing by right-leaning media and, too often, by “influencers” who wittingly or not do their bidding by parroting rumors and half-truths.

It is stressful enough for many people here in our community without having to endure an onslaught of unsubstantiated rumors.

Last week, one local Facebook “influencer” set off false alarms by recklessly posting that ICE agents were conducting an operation targeting a local fast-food restaurant. The unverified and obviously false post was shared hundreds of times and, disturbingly, remains up.

This sort of hysteria does nothing to inform and only serves the Trumpist aim of unnerving decent people who aren’t the actual targets of ICE enforcement. Trump wants to project the false message that ICE agents are everywhere, all the time, and after your friends and family. It’s nonsense, but that’s the classic Trump modus operandi.

Our local authorities need to respond to this fear mongering by offering actual facts about what law enforcement is — and isn’t doing— on our streets. Public safety depends on engaged residents having faith and confidence that they will be served and protected by law enforcement— and turning to them when needed. Boston has made excellent progress in this respect in recent years.

The reality of the Trump agenda is bad enough. Let’s not make ourselves accomplices by spreading unfounded rumors, or by letting falsehoods fill the information void.

Bill Forry is the editor and publisher of the Dorchester Reporter.