ICE Deportations lag another year as agents are deployed to border crisis

Assisting a record-breaking flood of people as they cross the border U.S. southern border Strained Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) The agency’s deportations were again a problem in fiscal 2022.

ICE officials stated that more than a thousand agents were deployed to the southern border by ICE throughout the year. This was to complement Customs and Border Patrol and to arrest migrants trying to enter the U.S. illegally. In many cases, ICE expels the migrants from the country immediately under Title 42 pandemic orders. Axios. ICE sent approximately 300 agents abroad to assist with international agency priorities.

“ICE continues to disrupt transnational criminal organizations, remove threats to national security and public safety, uphold the integrity of U.S. immigration laws, and collaborate with its colleagues across government and law enforcement in pursuit of our shared mission to keep U.S. communities safe,” In a Friday statement, Tae Johnson, ICE Acting Director, stated. The agency has released its end of the year report. report Friday

“ICE’s annual report highlights the efforts of our more than 20,000 law enforcement and support personnel in responding to complex cross-border and domestic threats. We will continue to safeguard national security and public safety while living our core values: integrity, courage, and excellence,” Johnson stated.

The deployments took ICE officers away from the agency’s main mission: enforcing U.S. immigration laws in the interior of the country. According to agency end-of-2018 data, there were roughly twice the number of illegal aliens arrested in 2022 than in 2021. Although deportations increased, they remained at historic lows.

ICE made about 143,000 arrests in fiscal year 2022, an increase from fiscal year 2021’s roughly 74,000 arrests. Many of the 2022 arrests involved migrants just entering the country.

The agency also increased the number of deportations from 59,000 in 2021, to approximately 72,000 in 2022. These years were far behind those of fiscal 2020, when almost 186,000 illegal aliens were expelled from the U.S.

ICE has nearly 4.8 million migrant case records that are being processed at immigration courts. This number is almost a third higher than last year. A total of 1.2 million people have been ordered by immigration courts to leave the United States.

Many aliens are being tracked by the immigration enforcement agency. “Alternative to Detention” (ATD) programs. ATD was established nearly two decades ago to remove some aliens from detention centers. However, they continue to monitor them via electronic surveillance and mandatory check-ins by case agents. ICE stated that there are approximately 321,000 people currently enrolled in these programs.

The agency was established in recent years said It had “no records” Since October 2018, there have been over 2,000 aliens enrolled in this program. ICE responded to an open records request from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) on ATD enrollees with a letter saying that a search for records turned up nothing.

“ICE has conducted a search of the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) for records responsive to your request and no records responsive to your request were found,” TRAC was informed that the agency had been notified.

TRAC assistant Professor Austin Kocher vented frustration with the agency’s response in a post on social media: “Just days after announcing that the agency had been misleading to the public for months about how many immigrants were on gps ankle monitors, @icegov claims it can’t find records on over 350,000 immigrants in alternatives to detention program.”