Arrests and deportations by the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plummeted in fiscal year 2021 as the agency entered a “new era” under the Biden administration, which led officers to focus on detaining immigrants with serious criminal charges. convictions, show government figures released Friday.
ICE deportation officers arrested 74,082 migrants in fiscal year 2021, which ended in October, a 28% drop from 2020, when arrests were made. decreased sharply 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 data. The previous low was in the financial year 2004, when ICE recorded 175,106 deportations.
The sharp decline in ICE arrests and deportations is largely a reflection of the Biden government’s efforts to reshape the agency and reduce the immigrant groups that agents must detain. Administration officials also cited a “complex environment” during the pandemic that played a role in reducing arrests and deportations.
Current rules guide ICE officials to detain immigrants convicted of serious crimes, immigrants who have recently crossed the US border illegally, and those considered to pose a threat to national security, such as suspected terrorists. Under Biden-era rules, officers generally refrain from arresting immigrants with clean records if they have lived in the United States for years.
The Biden government has generally banned ICE officers from holding serious crime victims and pregnant or breastfeeding women, and has suspended scanning work at the construction site and the long-term detention of immigrant families with children. ICE officials also tried to enforce a 100-day deportation moratorium during the first week under President Biden, but the plan was blocked by a Texas lawsuit.
Republicans have strongly opposed policy changes at ICE, accusing the administration of not fully enforcing immigration laws at a time when border arrivals are skyrocketing. The progressives also expressed disappointment, criticizing officials for not further restricting ICE detention and arrests.
During a press conference on Friday, a senior ICE official, speaking on condition of anonymity, defended the administration’s policies, saying “fiscal year 2021 ushered in a new era at ICE”. The service, the official said, uses finite enforcement resources to detain immigrants who could pose a threat to public safety.
“We are focusing on what we consider to be quality arrests, those that pose the most serious threats to our communities,” another senior ICE official said during the call.
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Immigration arrests of immigrants convicted of “aggravated crimes” increased to 12,025 in 2021, from 6,815 in 2020. Under U.S. immigration law, “aggravated crimes” are a series of crimes involving serious, violent crime. such as murder and rape, as well as other crimes that are considered misdemeanors in some states.
Collectively, immigrants arrested by the ICE in fiscal year 2021 were convicted of a combined 1,506 homicide-related offenses, 3,415 sexual assaults, 19,549 assaults, 2,717 robberies and 1,063 abductions, the report said Friday.
The ICE also noted a slight increase in “general” arrests that occur during targeted operations in communities, as opposed to transfers from state or federal criminal detention. The ICE recorded 25,993 arrests in 2021, compared to 23,932 in 2020.
Nearly 500 of those arrests were made during an operation last year targeting sex offenders, 80% of whom had been convicted of child victimization crimes, the ICE report said.
Sixty-six percent of the 59,000 migrants deported last fiscal year had a criminal record, an increase from 56% in 2020, ICE reported. The rest were mainly immigrants transferred from the border detention. The agency said it also deported 2,718 alleged gang members and 34 suspected terrorists.
The deportation report does not include the 36,654 air deportations that ICE said it carried out on behalf of U.S. border officials to deport migrants treated as part of a Trump-era pandemic restriction known as Title 42.
The Biden government has also pledged to reform the ICE detention system, which consists mainly of a network of dozens of state prisons and for-profit prisons with dealership contracts.
The agency stopped holding migrants at two facilities plagued by allegations of ill-treatment of detainees last year, but has yet to take public action to fulfill Biden’s campaign promise to end speculative detention of migrants.
ICE has expanded the so-called “alternatives to detention” programs under Mr Biden. The programs allow the service to monitor migrants in deportation processes, through ankle screens, other GPS devices and curfews at home, without physically holding them in a detention center.
More than 182,000 migrants enrolled in alternative detention programs late last month, according to ICE figures. The service also detained another 18,000 migrants in detention facilities.
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- immigration
- US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
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