New
Statistics: Enforcement Continues Decline in 2016
By Jessica Vaughan, Center For
Immigration Studies
ICE deportations continue to decline this year and are on
pace to be the lowest since 2006, according to the latest ICE statistics.
Deportations of criminals also keep declining, despite a nationwide litany of
high-profile fatalities caused by criminal aliens, and despite the Obama
administration’s claimed focus on removing deportable criminals. ICE internal
metrics, including arrests, detainers and charging documents issued, show that
enforcement in the interior has reached the lowest level of this
administration. Most of ICE’s workload (72%) is still made up of cases referred
from the Border Patrol rather than aliens arrested in the interior of the country,
a trend that started in 2012. The number of aliens being detained is running
slightly higher than it was at this time last year, but still well below the
level mandated by Congress.
Deportations Keep
Dropping
The most recent ICE enforcement statistics were disclosed
in a document released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
These figures are current through the third week of June, and thus cover
approximately 75 percent of the federal fiscal year.
To date, ICE has completed 168,781 deportations, a slight
decline from the same point in 2015, but a continuation of the steep decline
that has occurred since 2012, when the administration took steps to suppress
interior enforcement and exempt the vast majority of illegal aliens from deportation.
ICE is on pace to complete about 230,000 deportations,
which would be the lowest number since 2006.
According to the ICE report, the sharpest declines in
deportations have occurred in the Chicago New Orleans Detroit Atlanta
Most Deportations are
Border Cases
The great majority of deportations (72%) completed by ICE
are border crossers who were initially arrested by the Border Patrol or port of
entry officers and turned over to ICE for deportation. Most of the rest are
aliens who were arrested in the interior, with only a handful of cases (less
than 1%) initiated by other agencies.
In previous administrations, border crossers did not make
up a large share of deportations credited to ICE. The inclusion of hundreds of
thousands of border cases in ICE deportation totals became the basis for
deceptive Obama administration claims of “record deportations” beginning in
2012, when in fact, deportations resulting from interior enforcement were
dropping sharply. Exposure of this statistical manipulation by the Center led
then-incoming DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson to acknowledge that Obama
administration deportation statistics are not comparable with those of previous
administrations.
Interior deportations fell to 46,511 to date, according to
the report, putting ICE on pace to complete 63,700 this year. This is
approximately one-fourth the number of interior deportations completed by ICE
in 2009, the first year of the Obama administration.
Criminal Deportations
Still Declining
Despite a claimed focus on the deportation of criminal
aliens, and a motto of “felons, not families,” ICE is deporting fewer criminals
too. To date, ICE has completed 43,005 deportations of criminals from the
interior. ICE is on pace to complete about 59,000 deportations of criminal
aliens in 2016. This is a decline of more than 60 percent from 2011, which was
the peak of criminal deportations that resulted from the implementation of the
Secure Communities program. Under Secure Communities, ICE developed the ability
to locate criminal aliens by matching the fingerprints of all those arrested
nationwide with the DHS databases of known aliens.
ICE Enforcement Activity
Still Declining
By every measure, ICE is doing less and less enforcement.
According to the agency’s key metrics – Encounters, Arrests, Detainers, and
Charging Documents Issued – fewer aliens have been put on the path to
deportation in 2016. The agency has simply stopped reporting on the number of
encounters (an in-person screening of an alien, usually in a jail). The number
of arrests is down 10 percent over the same time last year. The number of
detainers (a notice to a law enforcement agency that ICE intends to take
custody of an alien for deportation) is down 16 percent from last year. The
number of aliens charged with immigration violations is down by about five
percent from 2016.
In 2014, the Obama administration aligned itself with
anti-enforcement legal activists and, in a significant departure from decades
of practice and the language of federal regulations, declared that local law
enforcement agencies would have the choice to accept or refuse ICE detainers,
or immigration holds. Detainers are the main way ICE is able to take custody of
illegal aliens who have been arrested and/or incarcerated. Sanctuary
jurisdictions typically refuse to comply with ICE detainers and instead release
criminal aliens back to the streets, forcing ICE to have to track them down. In
addition, to appease sanctuary jurisdictions, ICE has begun issuing “Requests
for Notification” in lieu of traditional detainers (now called “Requests for
Action”).
Number of Non-Departed
Aliens Still Growing
The number of aliens who have been ordered removed but who
have not departed grew by more than 25,000 since the end of FY2015 and now
stands at 953,507. For more information, see the Center’s recent publication on
the non-departed, which includes a map of the aliens’ countries of citizenship.
Of these, 182,786 are convicted criminals, an increase of
more than 3,700 since last year. Of the criminals, 176,126 are at large, an
increase of nearly 4,000 since last year.
ICE Fails To Comply With
Detention Bed Mandate
As part of the appropriations process, Congress has
mandated that ICE maintain an average daily detained population of 34,000. In
the current year to date, ICE has detained an average of 28,449, or 16 percent
below capacity. The last time ICE complied with the congressional detention
mandate was in 2012. Even though space is available, ICE has released more than
86,000 criminal aliens from its custody since 2013, including more than 19,000
in 2015.4
Detainers Still a Key
Tool
Despite the efforts of anti-enforcement legal activist
groups to subvert the use of detainers, or immigration holds, they remain the
primary way in which ICE obtains custody of criminal aliens who have been
arrested or incarcerated. According to the report, ICE issued more than 44,000
of the most assertive form of detainer, known as a “Request for Action.” To
help institutionalize the controversial claim that detainers are optional for
local jurisdictions to honor, the Obama administration has promoted the use of
the meeker “Request for Notification” or “Request for Voluntary Transfer”
forms, but these were used in only about one-fourth of the cases to date.
Conclusion
These statistics reveal an alarming deterioration in
immigration enforcement. The economic, social, and public safety consequences
of this nullification of immigration law will surely be a lamentable legacy of
the Obama administration.
Ben Ferro (Editor, InsideINS.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment
We value your comments