The Enforcement and Removal Operations bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported nearly 300,000 illegal aliens in fiscal 2019, the agency reported this week.
ERO also collared nearly 150,000 illegals, but arrests decreased from last year because of the massive tsunami of illegals at the border that caused ICE to divert resources from immigration enforcement in the country’s interior.
Those arrested had racked up nearly 2,000 charges and convictions for homicide, and more than 12,000 charges and convictions for sex crimes.
The agency faces a major obstacle, it reported, in sanctuaries that refuse to honor detainers to hold illegal aliens until ICE can take them into custody.
The Numbers
The year-end report’s numbers demonstrate the monumental task the agency faces.
More than 1.1 million illegals were “apprehended or found inadmissible nationwide,” ICE reported, a 68-percent increase over fiscal 2018. The “vast majority,” of course, were caught at the border or stopped at ports of entry.
That “sustained increase in migration has stretched resources across the U.S. government, requiring ERO to redirect its enforcement personnel and detention capacity to support border enforcement efforts as well as a significantly increased detained population,” the agency reported. “This has negatively impacted the number of ERO’s interior arrests, as well as the percentage of removals stemming from such arrests.”
However much the border invasion affected ICE’s interior effort, the agency increased deportations over last year by more than four percent.
• ICE deported 267,258 illegals, or about 732 per day, a 4.4-percent increase from last fiscal year’s 256,085. Most of those removed, the agency reported, were aliens apprehended by the Border Patrol. That figure was 181,300. ICE apprehended the remaining 85,958.
• 85 percent of those deportees were in ICE detention.
• 91 percent of the illegals ICE collared and deported were convicted criminals or faced criminal charges.
The report noted that ICE focuses on illegal aliens who violate criminal statutes, not those who merely cross the border and stay out of trouble with the police. Thus, while almost all of its arrests are administrative, almost all those arrested are dangerous thugs.
Those numbers are of even more concern than the sheer number of the illegal aliens crossing the border. Illegal aliens, the data show, are responsible for a major crime wave. More than 86 percent of the 123,128 illegals ICE arrested for “administrative” violations were convicts or faced criminal charges, ICE reported.
Total charges and convictions for that group was 489,063, or an average of nearly four charges per person.
Among that nearly 500,000, charges and convictions exceeded these figures in these categories:
• 1,900 for homicide;
• 1,800 kidnapping;
• 12,000 sex offenses, with more than 5,000 for sexual assault;
• 45,000 for assault;
• 67,000 for drugs;
• 10,000 for weapons; and
• 74,000 for drunk driving.
Detainers Ignored
Of particular difficulty for ERO, as The New American has reported time and again, are leftist sanctuaries that ignore detainers from ICE and instead release dangerous thugs.
ICE issued 165,487 detainers on illegal-alien thugs whose criminal histories, the report says, included 56,000 assaults, 14,500 sex crimes, 5,000 robberies, 2,500 homicides, and 2,500 kidnappings. The number of detainers lodged in fiscal 2019 is seven-percent less than the 177,147 in 2018.
“One of the biggest impediments to ERO’s public safety efforts … was the lack of cooperation from an increasing number of jurisdictions nationwide” the agency noted.
Such is the subversion that ICE is publishing lists of illegals whom sanctuaries release. It is also publishing a Most Wanted list of fugitive illegals.
In mid-November, ICE published yet another detailed report on sanctuary subversion.
“On July 12, Washington County Sheriff’s Office deputies announced they had responded to a crash involving Alejandro Maldonado-Hernandez, as well as Patrick Ator and his wife, Janace Ator, who were traveling in another vehicle,” ICE reported.
Maldonado-Hernandez, an illegal alien, landed in the hospital. Patrick Ator was treated for severe injuries; Janice Ator died.
Cops arrested Maldonado-Hernandez for second-degree felony manslaughter, third-degree felony assault and misdemeanor reckless driving.
Four days later, ICE officers encountered the illegal alien in the jail and lodged a detainer. On August 8, the jail let him go.
He fled to Mexico to avoid prosecution, the agency reported on November 19.
In late November, ICE collared an illegal alien whom authorities in Yonkers, New York, defying a detainer, released after charging him with manslaughter.
Image: designer491 via iStock / Getty Images Plus
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor
