New Numbers Reveal Actual Damage of Joe Biden Immigration Policy

December 18, 2022 6:46 pm

Under President Joe Biden, immigration enforcement throughout the United States has declined precipitously, and now a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group has the numbers to prove it.

Jessica Vaughan, who directs policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, published her analysis of the situation this month.

“These policies [of Biden’s] have exempted nearly all but the most serious criminal aliens from arrest and removal and have imposed cumbersome new procedures and paperwork for ICE officers to complete cases.According to ICE records, the number of removals nationwide declined from 186,000 in FY 2020 to 59,000 in FY 2021,” Vaughan wrote.

“Although Biden officials say that the policies were established in order to prioritize the removal of the most serious deportable criminal offenders, in fact the result has been a decline in the removal of criminal aliens as well as other types of cases. For example, the number of removals of convicted felons nationwide dropped from 36,000 in FY 2020 to 27,000 in FY 2021.”

Vaughan examined trends in removals of aliens who were identified by ICE under the Secure Communities program. These were removal cases that originated because the alien was arrested for a local crime. They do not include border cases, fugitives, worksite arrestees, or other categories of ICE removals.

Among Vaughan’s key findings:

• Under Biden’s enforcement priorities, there was a 71 percent decline in removals of deportable aliens who came to ICE’s attention due to a local criminal arrest.

• Ten states experienced an extreme decline in enforcement of greater than 80 percent under Biden policies (Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Vermont).

• Of the 50 U.S. counties that typically have the most criminal alien removals, 14 experienced extreme declines (greater than 80 percent) under Biden policies. About one-third of these high-volume counties are in Texas.

• The high-volume counties with the steepest decline in removals of locally arrested criminals were Gwinnett County, Ga.; Plymouth County, Mass.; Bergen County, N.J.; and Kankakee County, Ill. Criminal removals dropped by more than 90 percent in these jurisdictions.

• There were 50 counties, parishes, or territories with a minimal baseline volume of enforcement where the number of criminal removals dropped by 90 percent or more. Eight of these were in Georgia.

• In one representative county, Howard County, Texas, under Biden policies just half the number of criminals convicted of homicides were removed than before, and there also were steep drops in removals of criminals convicted of assault, burglary, drugs, larceny, and sex offenses.

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Vaughan said the ICE records she obtained spanned Fiscal Years 2019 through 2021.

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