The nation’s immigration police are working day and night to detain and deport the thousands of illegal-alien criminals who cross our borders.
But the numbers that Immigration and Customs Enforcement released in its final report on removals during fiscal 2018 show that their assiduous effort is a akin to sweeping back the tide.
It’s a never-ending job. The totals in the report are staggering. ICE and Customs and Border Protection removed more than 250,000 criminal illegal aliens last fiscal year, including more than 1,000 convicted murderers.
Some good news in the report: The Trump administration has more than doubled the number of gang removals over the last year of the Obama administration.
The Data
The two agencies removed 256,085 criminal aliens in fiscal 2018, a 13.25-percent increase from the 226,119 removed in 2017, and the highest number since 2014. CBP took out 160,726, while ICE removed 95,360. Of the total removed, 145,262 had criminal convictions, a 14-percent increase from 2017. Another 22,796 faced pending criminal charges, a 39-percent increase from 2017, and 88,027 were designated as “other immigration violator[s].”
How big a figure is 256,085? Federal authorities removed the equivalent of the 255,214 people who live in Madison, Wisconsin, or nearly all the 258,612 residents of Buffalo, New York.
Frightening thing is, thousands of the illegals were murderers, dope dealers, sex fiends, and gang members. Dozens were terrorists.
Immigration gunshoes collared and removed 1,641 illegals convicted for some form of homicide, and 1,294 convicted of kidnapping, plus 4,975 sex criminals, not including those with sex-assault convictions. Authorities removed 3,740 of those in the latter category. Robbery and burglary convicts numbered 14,257. Another 8,094 of the removed aliens had weapons convictions.
Of course, most Americans aren’t likely to run into illegal-alien murderers. But they might well encounter a border-jumping drunk. Authorities removed 54,630 illegals convicted of drunk driving. They removed 55,109 convicted of offenses involving dangerous drugs.
Federal authorities also issued 177,147 immigration detainers, a 24-percent increase over fiscal 2017. The number was a staggering 106-percent more than the final fiscal year of the Obama administration.
Proving the Donald Right
And the numbers also show, as The New American has reported, that President Trump is right in his assessment of illegal aliens in general — that many of them are dangerous criminals. That would include the illegal aliens in Tijuana known now as “migrants.”
Authorities took out 5,872 known or suspected gang members, an 8.8-percent increase over the 5,396 removed in fiscal 2017. But it was an amazing 185-percent more than the 2,057 removed during the last year of the Obama administration.
Officials also removed 42 known or suspected terrorists, three less than fiscal 2017, but 15 more than the 27 removed during fiscal 2016.
Removals from the interior of the country also increased about 17 percent from 81,603 in fiscal 2017 to 95,360 in 2018. The removals for 2018 increased 46 percent from 2016.
Where They Were From
Unsurprisingly, the four countries that contributed the most removals were Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
The number of Mexicans removed was 141,045, a 9.5-percent increase from 2017. Another 50,390 were Guatemalans, a 50-percent increase from fiscal 2017. Hondurans numbered 28,894, a 29-percent increase, and Salvadorans, 15,445, an 18-percent decrease.
From there, the number removed per country dropped precipitously to less than 2,000 for every country on the list. China, with 726 removals, was 12th on the list.
ICE also reported 158,581 “administrative arrests.” Those constitute the “arrest of an alien for a civil violation of U.S. immigration laws, which is subsequently adjudicated by an immigration judge or through other administrative processes.”
That figure is a 10.5-percent increase from fiscal 2017, and a whopping 44-percent increase from 2016, again, the last year of the Obama administration when removing illegal aliens was not a priority of the former president’s administration.
Waiting in Tijuana
These figures notwithstanding, advocates to open the borders to the migrant horde squatting in Tijuana ignore what the president has said since the invaders began marching for the U.S. border on October 12.
The teeming mass of humanity likely contains innumerable criminals, the president said, a claim borne out by figures from the Mexican government: Nearly 10 percent of the 6,000 are criminals.
How many of the 500 are murderers, rapists, or dope dealers is unknown. But given the figures in the ICE report, the question migrant lobbyists won’t answer is why they want to bring in more criminals whom authorities must track down and deport.
Photo: AP Images
