Immigration has been a Republican target at the Biden admin….
Biden HAS moved to chage the focus of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from mass deportations to going after people who have criminal records….They have moved from the Trump admin ‘zero tolerance’ policy….
But?
ICE is still using the pandemic based deporattaion policy to turn away immigrats without going thru some the past legal steps….
Less deporation numbers have not made Republicans happy…..
But another gauge of ICE enforcement activity — immigration arrests in the U.S. interior — also showed a significant drop relative to historic averages. Officers working for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) made about 74,082 administrative arrests during the 2021 fiscal year, down from 104,000 during fiscal 2020 and an average of 148,000 annually from 2017 through 2019.
Biden administration officials said the figure reflects the administration’s efforts to emphasize “quality over quantity” by directing ICE to prioritize immigrants who pose public safety and national security threats.
The report said ICE arrested 12,025 individuals last year with aggravated felony convictions, nearly double the 2020 total. The agency highlighted a targeted operation that arrested 495 “noncitizen sex offenders” from 54 different countries, more than twice the number taken into custody in 2020.
“As the annual report’s data reflects, ICE’s officers and special agents focused on cases that delivered the greatest law enforcement impact in communities across the country while upholding our values as a nation,” Tae Johnson, the agency’s acting director, said in a statement.
The 59,011 deportations reported last year were the lowest total since 1995, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics. ICE, created in 2003, has more than 20,000 employees in its civil, criminal and legal operations and an annual budget of approximately $8 billion…..
Things change in an instant …..
The Biden administration announced that it would be terminating part of a Trump-era border policy, specifically for unaccompanied migrant children, amid growing pressure from immigration advocates to get rid of it.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it would be abolishing Title 42, a policy that allows for migrants at the border to be turned away and stops them from being able to seek asylum, with respect to unaccompanied migrant children.
The agency said that it addressed a Texas-based federal judge’s ruling on the issue, saying in a statement “in the current termination, CDC addresses the court’s concerns and has determined, after considering current public health conditions and recent developments, that expulsion of unaccompanied noncitizen children is not warranted to protect the public health.”….
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