Newly collected data reveal how deportation officers are removing substantially fewer illegal migrants, including convicted criminals, out of the United States under the Biden-Harris administration than under the Trump administration.
There were a total of 273, 708 removals of illegal migrants during the first three fiscal years of the Biden-Harris administration, which includes removals from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and other federal immigration agents, according to data compiled by the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE). This number marks a considerable decrease from the 749,462 removals that took place during the first three fiscal years under the Trump administration.
The sharp decrease in deportations correlated with a drop in removals of criminal migrants, according to the NICE data. There were 423,102 removals of criminal aliens under the first three fiscal years of the Trump administration, with that number falling to 134,617 during the same time period under the current administration.
“Overall, convicted criminal alien removals have decreased by 74%, completely undercutting the assertion by Kamala Harris that ICE has merely increased its focus on criminal aliens,” the NICE report stated. “In fact, her policies have ensured that most illegal aliens can remain in the country indefinitely — even those who have committed a crime.”
“So, instead of working to swiftly remove the hundreds of thousands of criminal aliens with convictions or pending charges, Harris and her henchman [Homeland Security Secretary] Alejandro Mayorkas have made it more difficult for ICE officers to even arrest them,” the report continued.
The decrease in removals under the current administration came despite a monumental increase in migrant encounters along the country’s borders.
There were a total of 2,313,103 migrant encounters made by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents during the first three years of the Trump administration, according to the NICE data. That figure rose to 7,924,245 during the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration.
“Under President Trump, ICE removed illegal aliens at a rate of 32% of the aggregate number of encounters,” the report stated. “Under Biden and Harris, ICE has only removed aliens at a rate of 3.5% of the aggregate number of encounters.”
The decline in removals is a result of the steep drop in arrests of convicted criminal migrants, according to the report. There were 302,984 ICE arrests of convicted criminals during the first three fiscal years of the Trump administration, with that number falling to 126,410 arrests of convicted criminals during the same time frame under the current administration.
“With current ICE arrest totals (both criminal and immigration violators) making up a fraction of what they used to be under President Trump, staffing has remained level,” NICE stated. “This only further illustrates the fallacy continually espoused by Kamala Harris and agency officials that ICE does not have the staff to arrest more of those who are unlawfully present, and thus, can only arrest specific criminals defined by an anti-enforcement policy memo.”
Polling indicate former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are neck-and-neck in the 2024 presidential campaign, and immigration has become a top issue with voters.
Harris has shifted to the right on border security issues since becoming her party’s presidential nominee, despite a long history of opposing immigration enforcement measures. The Democratic candidate now says she supports consequencesfor those that unlawfully enter the country and, during a visit to a border town, called for a tightening of asylum restrictions.
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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