Washington, D.C. (December 6, 2021) – The Center for Immigration Studies recently obtained detailed records on deportations from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, showing a collapse in immigration enforcement under policies imposed by the Biden administration.
- In Biden’s first five months, removals dropped by 80 percent from the same time period in 2020, which was already low due to the pandemic lockdown.
- Removals have dropped by 90 percent since 2019, the last normal year for ICE operations.
- Removals of aliens with serious criminal convictions dropped by over 50 percent from 2020, and 65 percent since 2019.
- If this pace continues, ICE will remove approximately 62,000 aliens for the entire 2021 fiscal year, down from about 186,000 in 2020, a year of greatly reduced activity due to the pandemic. The total number of removals in 2019, a more normal year, was just over 267,000.
- Removals in certain field offices that do not handle many border cases – such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Denver, Miami, New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, and Washington DC/Virginia -- have dropped dramatically.
- The Baltimore Field Office removed only 32 aliens during the first five months of the Biden administration despite covering an area with a large number of illegal alien residents, and a significant amount of MS-13 and 18th Street gang activity.
Jessica Vaughan, the Center’s director of policy studies and author of the report, said, “Biden officials claim that the new policies make ICE more efficient, but in fact the result is simply less enforcement, and even enforcement against criminals, who should be the top priority. They have accomplished the near abolition of interior immigration enforcement by miring officers in red tape or taking them off the job. Not only is this approach a waste of government resources, it greatly undermines the integrity of our legal immigration system and ends up causing public safety problems to boot.
“Congress and the states have the means to strengthen enforcement and improve public safety,” said Vaughan. “Congress could intervene to impose stricter enforcement mandates and spending requirements. State and local governments could and should act to discourage illegal settlement, penalize illegal employment, maintain strict eligibility requirements for all public benefits and driver’s licenses, and ensure that state and local law enforcement agencies are cooperating fully with ICE to identify criminal aliens.”
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