Did Biden Abolish ICE?

In FAIR's 50th episode of the Understanding Immigration podcast, we review recently obtained ICE removal data from FY 2021 which shows that the Biden administration is clearly refusing to enforce our immigration laws.

Show Notes

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The Federation for American Immigration Reform's podcast bringing you the most important updates about U.S. immigration. Featuring special guests including members of Congress, journalists, and experts in the field.

Jason:
Today on Understanding Immigration: Did Biden Abolish ICE?

Preston:
hello and welcome back to fair's understanding immigration podcast this is preston hennekens affairs government relations manager and I’m joined by my colleague jason peña from our research department we're going to be talking about the recent report from immigration and customs enforcement that shows a dramatic drop in deportations during the 2021 fiscal year ICE is responsible for enforcing immigration law and the interior of the country and they are also responsible for deporting illegal aliens since president biden took control of the white house in january 2021 removals fell by about 70 percent jason I want to talk to you about this because your team dove into this data and really analyzed it tell us a little bit about it and just explain what this means for immigration enforcement

Jason:
of course preston it's good to be here so some key highlights from the research team's report to start off with so far based on the data that we have there have been only 55,000 total deportations for fy 2021. as you mentioned this is a 70 percent decrease from the previous fiscal year of those deportations more than 28,000 occurred during the trump administration in other words in the four first four months of fy 2021 at least half of these occurred under the trump administration's oversight over ICE another key highlight from the report 143,000 immigration violators have been released into the interior of the country all right I want I want to I want to come back to that later on of those 16,000 have prior criminal convictions mind you these are for non-immigration related crimes another key highlight to take away from the report over 45,000 immigration law breakers have been arrested by ICE again this is a 56% decrease from the previous year

Preston:
yeah and so a few things to touch on first I just want to remind our listeners who might be confused when we're talking about the fiscal year we are talking about september 2020 until october 2021 and that's why jason brought up that there was an overlap where the trump administration was still they still had their political appointees in charge at ICE we still had trump trump policies essentially and so it's remarkable that you know close to it's not quite half but a large amount of these removals occurred under trump's watch and then they just dramatically fell off another thing jason that I wanted to hit on is you mentioned the 143,000 people of people that were leased into the interior of the country was that done because of a particular policy that was in place was that done because they you know they weren't found to be in violation of certain laws how does that happen when we are supposed to be removing immigration violators from the country

Jason:
no of course preston so that particular action comes from a series of policies that have been implemented by the biden administration since january of last year biden's DHS secretary alejandro mayorkas considered to be the architect of a lot of this data here he has implemented a number of policies that have prevented ICE agents from arresting and removing certain aliens one of his policies prevents ICE agents from removing illegal aliens who are of a particular age if they have ties to the to their to their community depending if they are mentally competent to remain or be removed into the united states so all of this so this has been the culmination of just mayork as his anti-enforcement he fundamentally does not agree that I should be out there doing their jobs which is enforcing the immigration laws on the books so he he's doing exactly what biden had campaigned on which is essentially handcuffing ICE from removing illegal aliens from the country

Preston:
right and then something else that caught my attention was not only the low number of removals of deportations but also the really low number of arrests by ICE so you know ICE making arrests in the interior of the country and looking at the figures from the report that FAIR published we see that in 2017,2018 and 2019 ICE arrests are at or above or somewhat below about 140,000 a year and in fy 2020 which included the bulk of covid 19 where we saw just less illegal immigration at the border in general that number was still at about 100,000 in 2021 that number is over 40,000 under 60,000. that that's a huge drop off could you go into that figure a bit because that is a really I think shocking number in addition to the lack of removals

Jason:
no of course again it's important to note that again with these with these policies and these memos in place preventing ICE agents from allowing to conduct these arrests most of these arrests that occurred in fy 2021 happen also under the trump administration so again take that into perspective another thing too is that a lot of these arrests that didn't occur under the trump administration occurred under the biden administration at the border and what does that mean so obviously we have an unprecedented border crisis occurring right now obviously border patrol agents and other CBP officials are overwhelmed they need every helping hand that they can get that said ICE agents have been deployed along the southern border to help with processing illegal aliens now what has occurred is ICE under the biden administration they have been counting their arrests that they that have been effectuated at the border as their own as opposed to CBP or border patrol counting it as one of their own we saw this similar truck under the obama administration when they tried to give the perception that they were tough on immigration enforcement where they would count returns at the border as a removal so it's a similar accounting gimmick that we're seeing here under the biden administration

Preston:
so it's actually quite lower you're saying because these are really arrests that should have been noted under CBP's authority because it's happening within close proximity to the southern border (correct) wow okay that's that's interesting and it's you know these numbers are just shocking through and through and it's interesting because it's definitely it definitely looks to me at least like it's by design this is something that joe biden ran on in the campaign against former president donald trump this is something that the current DHS secretary mayorkas has said is a priority is to change the enforcement guidance for ICE and so getting into that you know it's very clear that immigration law is not being enforced in this country these figures should show that clearly let's take a page from kamala harris's playbook and let's try to get down to the root causes of these issues that's something she's been talking about quite a bit as the border czar who refused to take any authority for that job (for sure) but so talking about root causes you know why did this happen we talked earlier about some of the changes that happened at ICE are we seeing less people coming to the border that doesn't seem to be the case as it was in fiscal year 2020 because of covid so is it really entirely because of the changes that have been put in place during this past year by the biden administration

Jason:
absolutely preston I mean again illegal immigration has not been going down by any stretch of the imagination all evidence points to that it is increasing substantially we clearly have the mayhem that's mounting at the border as evidence of that to go back to the memos that I mentioned earlier again these memos have fundamentally changed what it means to be an ICE officer whose job is to arrest and remove illegal aliens from the country again one other memo that has hampered the efforts for ICE agents has been arresting them in certain locations I know FAIR’s GR department has talked about this in the past where there are literally maps that have been drawn showing where you cannot arrest certain illegal aliens so assuming you find an illegal alien that meets the criteria to be deported age mental health ties to the community or lack thereof you have you cannot arrest some across the street from a school you can't arrest them right near certain locations so on top of assuming that you were able to find an alien that's subject for removal according to the DHS secretary you have to make sure you do it in a proper safe space for illegal aliens so a lot of the all these policies taken together have essentially hampered ICE agents at every turn so essentially mayrokas has abolished ICE without actually because again ICE hq is still here in washington dc they're still there they're still working but he's essentially abolished them through these memos that he's implemented

Preston:
exactly and to jump on that point I remember seeing a few I assume it was a few months ago there was a map that some organization did it might have been center for immigration studies if it isn't them then you know it was someone else but there's a map of washington dc and there's a tally of every location where you cannot under these current enforcement guidelines where you cannot arrest and detain an illegal alien and it's essentially the entire city there are pockets where you know at intersections where you could but it's when would that ever occur and that's to say nothing about the sanctuary legislation and sanctuary policies that are in place in places like california which has an enormous illegal alien population in places like new york new york city which has again has an inordinate number of illegal aliens living in this country and then even in places like texas which has republican leadership at the state level you see at the city and county level in places like harris county in austin in you know the larger cities they do they have sanctuary policies in place where it's become incredibly difficult for ICE to do their job in the places where they're needed most

Jason:
no you're absolutely right about that preston I mean so to go back to a investigative report last year there was a there was a television news reporter based out of san antonio and what she had uncovered was that the san antonio area law enforcement agencies they do cooperate with ICE and they were willing to hand over these criminal aliens to the appropriate deportation officers because they had a detainer issued on them but the local ICE field offices said no we can't take these criminal aliens so here you have a case where these jurisdictions are willing are cooperating with immigration officials but now these same agencies have to release these criminal aliens back on back onto the streets mind you former acting ICE director tom homan had made this point recently that again these recent arrests that ICE has made or these individuals that they've released into the country this doesn't fully account as you said to sanctuary jurisdictions such as new york california what have you that are releasing criminal aliens in mass so again these are just the illegal indians that we know about who knows how many scores of criminals that are roaming our streets right now

Preston:
and so as we get to this you know what if anything can congress do to try and put a stop to this and to reverse these trends is there really anything or are we are we really at the mercy of alejandro mayorkas’ policies until a potential change after 2024

Jason:
no that's a good question president so there are some things there are certain members of congress that have introduced legislation to enable some of ICE’s arrests and deportation powers there's some members on the house side that have introduced that have called on alejandro mayorkas to be impeached from his position but as things stand now I don't know if those actions will gain any traction just because of the current composition of both chambers of congress and the presidency so as of right now we're working with very little

Preson:
and then this is more of a question for you as one of FAIR’s researchers you know do we have any estimates using this initial data what the biden administration's ultimate numbers will look like after four years in office compared to maybe what you know former president trump's tenure looked like and even what former president obama's tenure looked like
Jason:
so as of now so we're right now we're working with the data that we were able to extract from ICE but if things continue to project as they are now we can only again based on the numbers that we've retrieved it can only get worse from here right we're watching this situation closely as to whether ICE will officially release their report for fy 2021 and then we can make a better calculation from there

Preson:
and then you know finally I just want to end on a general point and a general question for you when we're not enforcing our immigration law that's written on the books that has been passed by previous congresses signed into law by previous presidents what kind of effect does this have on our country when we are we as I say we as you know the united states are not enforcing our own laws and we're seemingly sidestepping them watering them down with executive memos and executive orders I mean what kind of effect does this have on our country that we're not even willing to enforce the laws that we've passed

Jason:
it shows that we're not serious as a nation when we're not even to when we're not even willing to enforce a baseline level of our of our immigration laws I mean you know we here at FAIRs we've talked about this for years how sanctuary jurisdictions have essentially become magnets for illegal aliens because they know that there's a very little chance that they will be handed over to ICE authorities and that's what the united states has essentially become one big sanctuary country what this would this reads to countries across the globe is that saying come here now and there's very little chance that you will be removed from the country this is a complete the way ICE and really all of DHS is how they're being conducted right now as a complete mockery of our immigration laws it shows that we're not we're not taking the laws on the books seriously and unfortunately it's a slap on the face to legal immigrants who did things the right way and they're seeing that their actions were essentially for nothing because of how mayorkas the biden administration have thrown open the gate for all these illegal aliens to come in

Preston:
no that's absolutely right it's it must be frustrating for people who waited 10 15 years the right way to get a green card and who are now either legal permanent residents or who are citizens it's it is insulting to them to see what's going on at the border and to see how they had to go through the process the right way and had to pay you know a huge amount in fees in procuring a lawyer to help them through the process and to see what's happening now is it must be for them very disappointing and I think that's a great point to end on for today we hope that those of you listening have enjoyed today's episode of understanding immigration I encourage everyone to visit our website fairus.org to see our research team's report on this data that we cited today that report is titled FAIR uncovers bombshell ICE report revealing record low removals in fiscal year 2021 we encourage everyone to visit our social media channels as well we're on facebook and on twitter @FAIRImmigration more episodes of the understanding immigration podcast can be found on spotify apple podcasts and on our website until next time this has been understanding immigration presented by FAIR