Senior Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have accused the Biden administration of significantly misrepresenting ice arrests to make them appear higher than they actually are.
At a press conference Wednesday, media, senior ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials promoted unprecedented efforts to arrest illegal criminal immigrants during President Donald Trump’s first 50 days in office. Since Trump returned to the White House, more than 30,000 ice arrests have been made, roughly in line with all ice arrests made under the Biden administration in 2024. (Related: Mayor of Boston has put forward a $650,000 bill to prepare for a hearing for the Sanctuary City Council)
Authorities also accused the previous administration of intentionally misleading the American people by misclassifying people who were discarded under the ice and misclassifying people who were released to the US as ice arrests.
“[The Biden administration was] As an ice arrest, we intentionally mislead Americans by categorizing processed individuals who have been released inside the US,” said Ice acting director Todd Lyons. “A comprehensive review was conducted internally on the ice, and tens of thousands of cases were found recorded as arrests. In fact, these cases were simply illegal aliens that were dealt with and released into the American community.”
LOS ANGELES, CA – September 8: Immigration and customs enforcement agents arrest illegal immigrants with criminal records in an early morning raid in Los Angeles, CA on Thursday, September 8, 2022. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times Getty Images)
“The previous administration counted these arrests, even if immigration enforcement action was not taken,” Lions continued, adding that “many” of the released immigrants are violent criminals and gang members. “During the Biden administration, ice officers were usually tasked with identifying removable public safety threats. Instead, they were reassigned to dealing with this unprecedented amount of illegal aliens crossing our southern border.”
Action Ice Chief said these actions left criminal immigrants widely throughout the nation.
ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations Division landed 113,431 administrative arrests during fiscal year 2024. Annual Report For that year. However, a senior ICE official on Wednesday explained that the “majority” of the number includes “pass-through” arrests.
“They were told to pass through the ice and report to the ice office before they were released inside,” the ice official said. “None of these arrests were made by ice.”
In contrast, the Trump administration has won a total of 32,809 illegal immigrants arrests between January 20th and March 10th. Senior ICE officials said pass-through arrests were not included.
Of all ice arrests that have occurred in the last 50 days under Trump in the last 50 days, almost half have been found criminally convicted, with a further 1,000 people pending criminal charges, according to DHS officials. A total of 1,155 people arrested were also suspected of being members of the gang. That’s a few times more than the gang members suspected of being arrested in the same period last year.
When he took office in January 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order slate aimed at rewinding border enforcement agencies built under Trump’s first term, and even attempted a 100-day moratorium on deportation. However, as the border crisis began and worsened under his surveillance, Biden moved further directly into enforcement policies, culminating in the signature of an executive order that closed the southern border to asylum seekers.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has issued his own gusts of executive orders and administrative changes, with the aim of Ice Agent being freed to better complete the mission. The administration has played a fair game of so-called “sensitive places” for deportation officers, given far more freedom to carry out enforcement measures, marshalling resources from almost every other federal agency to help immigrant enforcement.
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