Deportation Numbers Unwrapped Raw Statistics Reveal the Real Story of ICE Enforcement in Decline
This report examines data from a collection of mostly unpublished internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE statistics, to provide an alternative evaluation of the administration’s record on immigration enforcement that is based on raw statistics rather than pre-packaged press kits. These statistics show that, contrary to what is commonly believed, in fact immigration enforcement in the interior has slowed significantly in the last few years. ICE is arresting and removing noticeably fewer illegal aliens from the interior now than was the case five years ago, and even two years ago. Its focus has shifted away from interior enforcement in favor of processing aliens who are apprehended by the Border Patrol.
While the agency claims that it has stewarded resources effectively by guiding agents to hone in on criminals, in fact the number of criminal aliens removed from the interior also has declined, even as ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division (ERO) is notified of more arrested criminal aliens than ever before, through the Secure Communities program. These statistics stand in stark contrast to claims of “record deportations,” which largely have been taken at face value by the news media and many lawmakers.
The report also presents previously unpublished statistics disclosing the startlingly large number of cases on ICE’s post-final-order docket of aliens who have been ordered removed, but who remain living here in defiance of immigration enforcement. These “non-departed” illegal aliens are emblematic of the dysfunction in our immigration system, and must become a priority for enforcement before public trust in our system can be restored.
Key Findings:
The number of deportations resulting from interior enforcement by ICE declined by 19 percent from 2011 to 2012, and is on track to decline another 22 percent in 2013.
In 2012, the year the Obama administration claimed to break enforcement records, more than one-half of removals attributed to ICE were the result of Border Patrol arrests that would never have been counted as a removal in prior years. In 2008, under the Bush administration, only one-third of removals were from Border Patrol arrests.
Total deportations in 2011, the latest year for which complete numbers are available, numbered 715,495 – the lowest level since 1973. The highest number of deportations on record was in 2000, under the Clinton administration, when 1,864,343 aliens were deported.
When claiming record levels of enforcement, the Obama administration appears to count only removals, which are just one form of deportation, and only a partial measure of enforcement. Beginning in 2011, a shift of some of the routine Border Patrol case load to ICE enabled the administration to count an artificially high number of removals.
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the division of ICE that is responsible for work site enforcement, combating transnational gangs, overstay enforcement, anti-smuggling and trafficking activity, and busting document and identity theft rings, now contributes very little to immigration enforcement. In 2013 HSI has produced only four percent of ICE deportations, making just a few thousand arrests per year throughout the entire country.
ICE is doing less enforcement with more resources. Despite reporting more encounters in 2013 than 2012, ICE agents pursued deportation of 20 percent fewer aliens this year than last.
Enforcement activity declined in every ICE field office from 2011 to 2013, with the biggest declines in the Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Washington DC/Virginia, and Houston field offices.
Criminal alien arrests declined by 11 percent from 2012 to 2013, despite the completion of the Secure Communities program, which generates more referrals of arrested aliens than ever before. ICE agents took a pass on hundreds of thousands of aliens who were arrested by local authorities in those years.
ICE is carrying a case load of 1.8 million aliens who are either in removal proceedings or have already been ordered removed. Less than two percent are in detention, which is the only proven way to ensure departure.
As of the end of July 2013 there were 872,000 aliens – nearly half of ICE’s total docket – who had been ordered removed but who had not left the country.
The State Department continues to issue tens of thousands of visas annually to citizens of countries that refuse to take back their countrymen who are ordered removed from the United States. Many of these are violent criminals.
