The Biden administration lied about the number of arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a top ICE official told reporters today.
In yet another scandal uncovered in the open-borders administration, it was counting illegal aliens whom border agents caught and released as “arrests.”
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons disclosed the lie to reporters during a phone call, Fox News reported, during which he also ran down the numbers of arrests and deportations by the new Trump administration.
Meanwhile, ICE continues to arrest illegals who have been deported multiple times, the agency disclosed today.
Lyin’ Joe
The Biden administration “was cooking the books on ICE data,” Lyons said:
They were purposely misleading the American people by categorizing individuals processed and released into the interior of the United States as ICE arrests.
A comprehensive review was done internally here with ICE. We found tens of thousands of cases that were recorded as arrests when, in fact, these instances were illegal aliens that were simply processed and released into the American communities.
To repeat, the figure is tens of thousands.
Thus, the “majority” of fiscal 2024’s 113,431 arrests were “pass-through,” Fox reported, “meaning that ICE didn’t take an enforcement action against those foreign nationals, and they instead just passed through ICE before being released into the interior and were told to report to an ICE office.”
That hasn’t happened under Trump, another official told the reporters. “What we are doing now is actual immigration enforcement, not enforcement theater,” the official said.
Continued Fox:
As for interior arrests, in FY 2024, ICE enforcement removal operations made 33,242 at-large arrests, only 29% of all ICE arrests. For comparison, officials say that ICE made 32,809 arrests from Jan. 20 to March 10 [this year], meaning they will surpass the FY 2024 number this week.
Drilling into that last datum reveals just what open borders have done for the safety of the American heartland.
“Of those arrests,14,111 were convicted criminals and 9,980 have pending criminal charges,” Fox reported. More than “1,150 were suspected gang members, two and a half times the 483 arrested in the same period last year.”
The New App
The good thing is, as Fox reported, the Trump administration has created a new smartphone application to replace the Biden administration’s unlawful app that invited illegals to an appointment at the border and release into the country.
This new one helps them self-deport.
How many illegals will use it is impossible to predict. But those who don’t and stay in the country will, if arrested, be deported and never permitted to return.
“The CBP Home app gives aliens the option to leave now and self-deport, so they may still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said. “If they don’t, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return.”
Recent Arrests
Underscoring just what a problem illegals are, ICE reported today that it arrested three stubborn illegals who refused to stay out of the country. One is a dangerous killer, and another has a conviction for attempted murder. Two of them have been deported at least 12 times.
Previously deported Guatemalan illegal Joel Sac-Tambriz, 24, was collared on a warrant for vehicular homicide, ICE reported. On June 9, 2024, police allege, he mowed down a 30-year-old man and fled the scene, as illegals often do. The cultural enricher also faces charges of assaulting an officer and evading arrest.
ICE had apprehended Sac-Tambriz in 2018 and deported him.
During their encounter with Sac-Tambriz, ICE agents also arrested three other illegals — one Chinese and two Guatemalans.
ICE deported Jose Antonio Garcia, 51, a Mexican illegal, after Calipatria State Prison, honoring an ICE detainer, handed him over to authorities.
Garcia jumped the border seven times before he was convicted of attempted murder in 2007 and sentenced to 20 years in prison, ICE reported.
ICE also deported Mexican illegal Juan Carlos Ruiz-Diaz, 44, the agency reported:
Ruiz-Diaz was found illegally present in the U.S. on Feb. 26 after having previously been removed on July 16, 2002, Oct. 25, 2002, Nov. 25, 2002, Dec. 16, 2003, Sept. 23, 2008, and April 28, 2011. Ruiz-Diaz was previously convicted of illegal reentry on Aug. 27, 2008, and Oct. 27, 2010. Ruiz-Diaz had not received the consent of the U.S. Attorney General or the Secretary of Homeland Security to reapply for admission.
Lyin’ Politicians
Unhappily, ICE officials must deal with lawmakers who continued to claim that crossing the border illegally is not a crime. The claim might explain why so many illegals enter the country the first time or re-enter after deportation.
“They continue to say things like ‘the illegals’ and that they broke the law coming in,” Democratic U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas recently said:
But what they are not telling the American people is that it is a civil violation. It is not a criminal violation to enter the country illegally. … It’s not a crime. Which is why they’re so frustrated, because they really want our local law enforcement to go out and round up people, when they could be looking out for the murderers and sexual abusers, as well as the robbers. They want them to go and round people up on civil accusations.
That is false, as lawyer Crockett should know. Crossing the border illegally violates 8 U.S. Code 1325, which imposes both civil and criminal penalties.
