(Originally published in The Ridgewood Blog.)
El Paso TX, Despite the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents having a record number of encounters at the southern border this year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is showing a record low number of arrests and deportations.
ICE’s Fiscal Year 2021 Annual Report showed the lowest number of deportations in more than a decade. The agency deported 59,011 illegal immigrants in fiscal year 2021 compared to 185,884 illegal immigrants deported in fiscal year 2020.
During these same periods, the CBP was encountering 39 percent more people trying to cross the southern border. According to CBP statistics, between October 2020 and August 2021, agents encountered 1,542,685. Between October 2021 and August 2022, they encountered 2,150,639 people trying to cost.
ICE blamed the decrease in deportations primarily on COVID-19 and Title 42, a public health order used to expel certain migrants. However, if that was the case, the numbers would have looked comparable to the 2020 number. A talking points memo obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation read, “If you look at the months in FY20 that ICE was operating in a pandemic environment, we averaged about 6,222 administrative arrests per month. In FY 21, we averaged 6,174.”
This actually doesn’t support the case they want to make because in FY20. During FY20, CBP was encountering an average 38,174 illegal immigrants a month and from a pool that size ICE was deporting 6,222. The following year, however, the number of encounters jumped 279 percent to an average of 144,557 people a month while the number of deportations dropped to 6,174.
So, ICE was deporting illegal immigrants at a pandemic level while the number of encounters at the border had surged past typical non-pandemic years, which seemed to be in part due to the fact that the Democrats who took over the government were doing their best to send a message that the southern border was open. And immigrants got the message.
The memo indicates that ICE’s communications team knew the low numbers did not put the agency in a good light. They crafted a number of reasons that could be used for the numbers that don’t hold up very well when compared to the big picture of what was happening.
“The ICE communications team is tasked with a very complex and demanding mission. But it seems to me that even they knew that the results of this administration’s policies were indefensible,” Jon Feere, who was chief of staff at ICE during the Trump administration, told the DCNF.
None of the reasons even mention one of the obvious problems, which is that the Biden Administration didn’t want the illegal immigrants deported. The administration enacted policies that critics say exacerbated the border problem.
ICE could have easily listed one policy in particular among its excuses for not doing its job. The Biden Administration issued a 100-day moratorium on deportations and limited immigration enforcement to threats to national security, border security and public safety.
The reason why these moratoriums weren’t mentioned could be because they make the administration look bad. Not only didn’t they help fight the border problem, they were also struck down in court.
ICE should worry. The more it fails to do its job, the more people will begin to wonder whether the agency is needed. It’s duties could be passed to an agency that will actually do its job.
Michael A. Letts is the CEO and Founder of In-VestUSA, a national grassroots non-profit organization helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bulletproof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs.
