ICE Officials Made The Lowest Number Of Arrests In At Least A Decade: REPORT

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials made the lowest number of arrests from September 2020 through September 2021 in at least a decade, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations agents made around 72,000 arrests in the fiscal year 2021, according to the Post. During the same time frame in 2020, the officials made 104,000 arrests and averaged another 148,000 arrests annually between 2017 and 2019.

“ICE is in the process of finalizing our year-end fiscal numbers and these numbers will be shared publicly when the review is complete,” an ICE spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Tuesday. “Data integrity is of the utmost importance to the agency and ICE’s vetted statistics powerfully demonstrate the effectiveness of our current approach of prioritizing national security, border security, and public safety.”

ICE made around 34,100 arrests and deported about 24,300 illegal immigrants from Feb. 18 and Sept. 21, agency officials said. The agency provided around 600 agents to assist Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials who arrested around 22,30o illegal immigrants between June and August of 2021 compared to nearly 18,800 arrests during the same time frame in 2020.

CBP officials encountered more than 1.7 million migrants at the southern border in the fiscal year 2021, according to agency data.

Around 6,000 of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations officers made an average of one arrest per month during the fiscal year 2021, the Post reported. ICE made a record high number of arrests in the fiscal year 2011, totaling more than 322,000 enforcement actions.

ICE distanced from former President Donald Trump’s broad enforcement directives and focused on migrants with criminal backgrounds under the Biden administration, according to the Post. Agency officials arrested around 6,000 people who were convicted of aggravated felonies from Feb. 18 through Aug. 31, and around 3,500 during the same time frame in 2020.

More than 360 sex offenders were arrested by ICE officials between June and August 2021, and nearly 80% of the offenses involved children, according to an agency official.