Not only has Joe Biden reversed most of former President Donald Trump’s immigration and border policies, but his political appointees in the Department of ‘Homeland Security’ are also doing the bidding of his party’s hard-left faction by gutting enforcement.
According to the Washington Times, the deportation division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — the division of DHS the hard left most wants to eliminate — arrested 48 percent fewer convicted criminals last year while also deporting 63 percent fewer criminals and issuing 46 percent fewer “detainer” requests to other law enforcement agencies, effectively creating a whole new avenue of societal danger for Americans who have watched blue cities devolve into cauldrons of criminality.
At the same time, the Times reported, strangely enough, “arrests of illegal immigrants with no criminal records — whom the administration has generally deemed a lower priority for enforcement — soared 170%, according to the internal ICE numbers.”
The data, which the outlet obtained from a DHS source, pretty much prove what GOP critics have long alleged: The agency has “ceded much of its traditional role of interior enforcement of immigration laws under President Biden,” the Times reported:
Analysts said the drops in arrests and deportations of people with convictions on their records mean tens of thousands more dangerous people are out in American communities far from the southern border.
One ICE officer called the arrest and removal numbers “an acknowledgment that ICE officials are being paid not to do their job.”
The new data could also undercut the Biden administration in several court cases, where it is arguing its immigration enforcement priorities are focused less on numbers and more on “quality” arrests in the most serious cases.
“These numbers prove that the administration’s entire enforcement regime is built on a mountain of lies,” Stephen Miller, President Trump’s former point man on immigration issues and now the head of America First Legal, which is involved in those court challenges, told the Times.
“What this administration has done, as the data prove, is they have voluntarily released, by the tens of thousands, dangerous public safety threats that they have the resources to remove, and that they declined to remove as a discretionary policy choice,” he said.
The paper added in its exclusive:
The unpublished data is from fiscal year 2021, and covers ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division. That’s the branch that scours prisons and jails for deportable migrants, manages more than 3 million cases of people in the country awaiting hearings, handles the detention of tens of thousands daily, and operates the flights that ship deportees back home. …
Deportations saw an even bigger drop-off, with ERO recording just 39,149 convicts removed in 2021 — down 62% compared to 2020, when 103,762 convicts were ousted, and far below the pre-COVID rate of 2019, when 150,141 convicts were removed.
“Detainers” — official requests to state and local authorities to cooperate in turning over deportable migrants to ICE — also fell dramatically last year, down from 122,233 in 2020 to 65,940.
This insanity is a direct pandering to the Democratic Party’s left-wing lunatic faction.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said in 2018 as the Trump administration began ramping up policies aimed at protecting the sovereignty of our borders and American citizens that ICE had “become a deportation force,” according to CBS News, adding that “you should get rid of it, start over, reimagine it and build something that actually works.”
Well, part of what ICE is supposed to do is catch and deport people who are not legally allowed to be in the country, so yeah, that’s true.
CNN reported in July 2018:
Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin said he would introduce legislation that would dismantle ICE and create a commission to provide recommendations to Congress on how the government “can implement a humane immigration enforcement system,” according to a statement.
“We need to set up a commission that looks at the alternatives to ICE and really starts to understand how do we have these functions in a way that is accountable, transparent and humane,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), head of the House ‘Progressive’ Caucus, has said.
Fact: If we don’t have sovereign borders, we don’t have a sovereign country. If Republicans manage to retain Congress and the White House in the coming years, they need to pass immigration legislation that not only protects our people and our sovereignty but leaves future presidents no legal, constitutional way to dismantle border enforcement ever again.
