Robert Cerna, the acting Field Office Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations for ICE, insisted that the administration was justified in sending the Venezuelan nationals to the Salvadorian prison because many of the men are “terrorists.” What supports this claim? According to Cerna, the evidence is the lack of “specific information about each individual.”

But an absence of evidence that these men committed a crime no more proves their guilt than proves their innocence. Cerna committed—some might say deployed—the appeal to ignorance fallacy, also known as arguing from ignorance. This is the fallacy of using a lack of evidence as proof for our claim.