President Donald Trump’s drastic overhaul of immigration enforcement aimed at deporting millions has already led to nearly 23,000 arrests and 18,000 deportations last month, federal data shows.
Arrests within the country have surged compared to the Biden administration, but remain below the levels seen at the beginning of Trump’s term.
Deportations are lagging. As a result, 4,000 more people are in detention centers than when Trump first took office. An additional 3,000 people who were detained have been released back into the country.
The administration began its enforcement operations shortly after Trump took office, and ICE was quick to release the number of immigrants caught in its operations each day. People recorded in ICE detention peaked at 872 people per day at the end of January, before falling to just under 600 people per day in the first three weeks of February, the data shows.
This is a significant escalation compared to the Biden administration: ICE arrested and detained about 255 people per day last year. It also reveals the extent of a shift in Trump’s immigration priorities to increase enforcement in the interior of the country, not just at the border.
However, deportations have not kept pace with arrests. ICE deported an average of 600 people per day in mid-February, the latest available data, compared to more than 750 people per day in the 12 months leading up to November during the Biden administration.
The drop in deportations is partly due to a simultaneous shift in border policy. During the Biden administration, most people detained and deported were arrested crossing the southwest border. But the Trump administration acted to quickly close the border, ending the asylum process and other Biden-era programs that offered humanitarian aid to migrants.
Now, border agents are apprehending far fewer people than last year and sending fewer immigrants to ICE for detention and eventual deportation.
While border arrests have decreased, the aggressive effort to detain immigrants in other parts of the country has overcrowded detention facilities beyond the capacity set by Congress for funding. The total number of people detained by ICE has grown by more than 4,000 in the last month, to nearly 44,000.
At the same time, far fewer immigrants are being released on bond than during the Biden administration.
Under President Biden, many people who were not considered a threat to the community were allowed to leave detention under certain conditions, but that practice has virtually ended. ICE stopped granting bond to detainees almost entirely by the end of February.
The administration has said its strategy is focused on detaining and deporting criminals, and most of those detained have committed some crime. But data shows that the share of people detained without criminal charges has grown from 6% in mid-January to 16%.
Some members of the administration, including Tom Homan, the director of ICE, have expressed frustration that deportation numbers are not higher.
At the current pace, the administration does not appear to be on track to detain and deport millions of people this year, as they promised, but the numbers could still rise rapidly. Republicans in Congress have proposed billions in new funding for ICE and other agencies.
Source: The New York Times