You may not know the word “truthiness” but you have, without question, experienced it.

It first appeared on the opening graphics of the “Colbert Report” on Comedy Central when the now-CBS late show host’s career was just branching out. It was most often used to mock conservatives and imply that they didn’t rely on facts but rather just made wild assertions.

Like with so many on the Left, these snide comments are often indicative of what they do rather than a rebuke of conservatives.

Take, for example, the brouhaha over “the list” that the Department of Homeland Security published of 500 illegal immigrant sanctuary municipalities across the U.S. The list has been taken down since our first report about it on Friday.

Republican and Democrat lawmakers railed when they found areas in their districts on the list. In Virginia, counties that had voted heavily for Donald Trump in 2024 called their GOP representatives in Congress to complain, and county supervisors told local media that they had “no sanctuary law” on their books, so how could they possibly be “on the list.”

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, even mused, “They must have used A.I. to generate the list,” referring to artificial intelligence, which has frequently been connected to erroneous information when used for data searches.

Republican Virginia 9th District Rep. Morgan Griffith seemed to indicate where the issue might have arisen when he issued this statement regarding how conservative localities in his district could have been added to the list: “As of now, we do not have a definitive answer [from the Department of Homeland Security]. However, it appears that there may be some paperwork anomalies related to federal detainers, particularly at some regional jails.”

A criminal detainer is a request from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to a local law enforcement agency to keep an individual in jail or custody for up to 48 hours beyond his scheduled release. This allows ICE to take the individual into federal immigration custody for potential immigration violations.

Officials in Augusta County, Virginia, as an example, discovered that their jail’s detention policy for the detainers was only 24 hours, which may be the reason the county wound up on the list. A member of the Board of Supervisors told The Daily Signal on background that when that was discovered, they changed the policy to 48 hours.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem told FOX News on Sunday, “Some of the cities have pushed back. They think because they don’t have one law or another on the books that they don’t qualify [to be on the list], but they do qualify. They are giving sanctuary to criminals.”

What she is referring to is “truthiness.”

Friday afternoon, as Virginia municipalities began issuing statements on their inclusion on the list, they all seemed to be quoting from the same legal template.

“To the best of our knowledge, [insert municipality] is not a sanctuary jurisdiction. We are currently reaching out to our representatives to seek clarification regarding the designation‚” the eerily similar statements from several counties read. “[Municipality] cooperates with and adheres to federal laws. [Municipality]’s foremost priority remains the safety and well-being of [municipality] residents.”

Certainly, when the case is so legally charged, having a lawyer write a carefully worded statement is advisable, and that is where the “truthiness” comes in.

In Friday’s column, we detailed how these municipalities—many that went heavily for Donald Trump in 2024’s presidential election—can say that they aren’t sanctuaries when they are in reality.

As Griffith’s statement alludes to, the several municipalities that make up the governing boards of regional jails have created policies that state those jails will not contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement when they have a criminal illegal immigrant in custody who is the subject of a detainer notice from federal authorities.

While the municipalities on their own have not created so-called sanctuary policies, the regional jails that they share control over have.

That is how the county supervisors can say that “they [the municipal government] don’t have any such sanctuary laws” while still protecting the illegal aliens from deportation rather than protecting the citizens of their community from their crimes.

It’s all about “truthiness.”