Washington, D.C. (March 24, 2021) – This week’s episode of the Center for Immigration Studies’ weekly podcast covers the Biden administration’s decision to not publish the 2021 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “Enforcement and Removal Operations Report”. This detailed annual report, which allows policymakers, law enforcement officers and the public to compare enforcement metrics over time, has been published by December 31 for at least the last decade.  

Jon Feere, the Center’s director of investigations and a former ICE chief of staff, discusses how last week, under pressure from congressional offices, ICE finally published a narrative report, with a spin, lacking data needed to assess accurately the impact of recent policy changes.

“The Biden administration is hiding the impact of their immigration enforcement policies at a time when thousands of illegal border crossers are being apprehended daily at the southern border and then released into the country, “ said Feere.

“The numbers have been cooked. In reality, deportations have dropped like a rock – especially criminal aliens. The number of convictions for murder, robbery, kidnapping, sexual assaults, etc. have all gone down. The Biden administration has de facto abolished ICE,” said Jessica Vaughan, the Center’s director of policy studies, who thanks to numbers received through a FOIA request, has been able to analyze the 2021 law enforcement efforts – doing the job the government refuses to do.

In the closing commentary, Mark Krikorian, the Center’s executive director and the host of Parsing Immigration Policy, highlights the increasing pressure for the Biden administration to rescind  the pandemic-related Title 42 orders and how the lifting of the orders will exacerbate the crisis at the southern border.