The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests and deportations plummeted in fiscal year 2021 when the agency entered a “new era” under the Biden administration. ordering agents to focus on detaining immigrants with severe criminal convictions, government figures released Friday show.
ICE deportation agents arrested 74,082 immigrants in fiscal year 2021, which ended in October, a 28% drop from 2020, when arrests were also made. abruptly decreased due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
The agency carried out 59,011 deportations in fiscal year 2021, an all-time low, according to ICE historical data. The previous low came in fiscal year 2004, when the ICE recorded 175,106 deportations.
The sharp decline in ICE arrests and deportations is largely a reflection of the Biden administration’s efforts to reshape the agency’s work and reduce the groups of immigrants that officers should detain. Administration officials also cited a “complex environment” during the pandemic that played a role in limiting detentions and deportations.
Current rules tell ICE officers to detain immigrants convicted of serious crimes, migrants who have recently crossed a U.S. border illegally, and those who are considered to pose a risk to national security. such as alleged terrorists. Under Biden-era rules, officers generally refrain from arresting immigrants with clean records if they have lived in the U.S. for years.
In general, the Biden administration has banned ICE officers from detaining victims of serious crime and pregnant or nursing women, and has disrupted workplace garbage and long-term detention of migrant families with children. ICE officials also tried to implement a 100-day deportation moratorium during President Biden’s first week in office, but that plan was blocked by a Texas lawsuit.
Republicans have strongly opposed the ICE policy changes, accusing the administration of not fully enforcing immigration laws at a time when border arrivals have skyrocketed. Progressives have also expressed frustration, criticizing officials for not further reducing ICE arrests and detentions.
During a call with reporters on Friday, a senior ICE official who asked for anonymity defended the administration’s policies, saying that “fiscal year 2021 ushered in a new era for ICE.” The agency, the official argued, is using finite enforcement resources to detain immigrants who could pose a risk to public safety.
“We are focusing on what we consider quality arrests, a kind of one that is the most serious threat to our communities,” another senior ICE official said during the call.
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ICE arrests of immigrants convicted of “aggravated crimes” increased to 12,025 in 2021, more than 6,815 in 2020. Under U.S. immigration law, “aggravated crimes” are a number of crimes that include serious and violent crimes such as murder and rape, as well as other crimes that are considered minor crimes in some states.
Collectively, immigrants arrested by the ICE in fiscal year 2021 had been convicted of a total of 1,506 homicide-related crimes, 3,415 sexual assaults, 19,549 assaults, 2,717 robberies and 1,063 kidnappings, the agency said in a report published Friday.
The ICE also noted a slight increase in “general” arrests, which occur during community-directed operations, as opposed to state or federal custody transfers. The ICE recorded 25,993 general arrests in 2021, compared to 23,932 in 2020.
Nearly 500 of those arrests were made during an operation last year against sex offenders, 80 percent of whom had been convicted of crimes related to child victimization, the ICE report said.
Sixty-six percent of the 59,000 immigrants deported this past fiscal year had a criminal record, up from 56 percent in 2020, the ICE said. The rest were mainly migrants transferred from border custody. The agency said it also deported 2,718 suspected gang members and 34 suspected terrorists.
The deportation count does not include 36,654 airstrikes that the ICE said it carried out on behalf of U.S. border officials to expel prosecuted migrants under a Trump-era pandemic restriction known as Title 42.
The Biden administration has also pledged to reform the ICE detention system, which consists mainly of a network of dozens of national prisons and for-profit prisons with agency contracts.
The agency stopped detaining immigrants at two facilities affected by allegations of ill-treatment of detainees last year, but has not yet taken public action to fulfill Mr Biden’s campaign promise to end the detention of immigrants. for profit.
The ICE has expanded the so-called “alternatives to detention” programs under Mr. Biden. The programs allow the agency to track migrants in deportation proceedings, using ankle monitors, other GPS devices and curfews at home, without physically keeping them in a detention center.
More than 182,000 immigrants were enrolled in alternative detention programs at the end of last month, according to ICE data. The agency also detained another 18,000 immigrants in detention centers.
- In:
- immigration
- US Immigration and Customs Service
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