Under the Biden admin they have actually risen by almost a 1/3 in the past year…..
Republicans and the media are NOT talking about this….
It’s NOT part of the GOPer political narrative of attacking Democrats on immigration , something the Trump admin did little except talked about Trump’s focus on the real estate of the ‘Wall’….
Biden is trying to improve the processing of immigrants to be sent back across the border and be allowed in America legally in a humane way….Not using the Trump ‘Zero Tolernce Policy’ that got Trump notoriety and trouble with the courts….
ICE is a broad agency that enforces civil and criminal laws, but it is perhaps best known for its controversial role in detaining and deporting immigrants for the Department of Homeland Security. In past years, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations officers have focused their arrests away from the border, and said they prioritize immigrants who allegedly commit crimes.
But officials said the agency is increasingly being drawn into border enforcement, and has dispatched 1,000 officers to the border to help Customs and Border Protection officers process new arrivals and either deport or “expel” them, or admit them into the United States to await a hearing in immigration court.
ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations officers arrested 142,750 migrants last fiscal year, nearly double the year before. Most were people who had already been apprehended at the southern border and then transferred into the agency’s custody, officials said.
Among them were 46,396 noncitizens with a criminal history, similar to the year before, but below the more than 90,000 with criminal records taken into custody in fiscal 2020, the report said.
ICE also deported 72,177 people to Mexico and dozens of other countries last fiscal year. Far more immigrants were expelled under a pandemic public health order known as Title 42, more than 1 million last fiscal year, but those are not counted as formal deportations….
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[Former Obama ICE Director] Sandweg said immigration cases should be resolved more quickly, deporting those who do not merit legal residency and granting green cards to those who do. Instead, he said, cases are piling up for months or years.
“This reflects how incredibly overwhelmed the system is,” he said. “At current resource levels it is beyond broken.”
President Biden has proposed legalizing the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the United States amid reports of labor shortages and falling birthrates in this country. Democrats and immigration analysts have long maintained that legalizing immigrants could lower ICE’s caseload and allow the government to quickly process newer cases.
Many Republican politicians, however, say stopping illegal border crossings must come first. Border officials made more than 2.3 million apprehensions last fiscal year and over 465,000 since the new fiscal year began in October.