Biden admin deporting roughly just one-fifth of illegal immigrants recently being deported, report
Despite record numbers of illegal border crossings, the agency is deporting historically low numbers of eligible candidates
Amid a surge of roughly 7,000 daily illegal migrant border crossings, U.S. immigration agencies are deporting just 100 illegal immigrants a day, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
FAIR makes the claim after reviewing Immigration and Customs Enforcement data that the group says puts deportation figures under the Biden administration at just one-fifth the number compared to recent years.
The group, which advocates strong border protection, believes the low, daily-deportation figure illustrates the administration's goal of knee-capping ICE by preventing it from executing a primary purpose – deporting illegal immigrants.
The ICE data shows that in a fiscal 2021, in which close to two million illegal immigrants were apprehended at the border, just 55,000 were removed by the immigration agency, according to FAIR.
The group says the numbers are in "long-delayed preliminary data quietly released" by ICE and the fiscal 2021 deportation number is "historically low," compared to those in fiscal 2017-2019 and about one-third of the total for fiscal 2020.
The removals that did take place occurred prior to Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas' change in department protocols about who agents should be arresting. Now that ICE agents are barred from arresting and deporting all but the most violent criminals, deportation figures may drop even lower in 2022.
"The new data confirms what we already knew: President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas aren’t judiciously enforcing our immigration laws," FAIR President Dan Stein said Wednesday. "They are willfully and unilaterally nullifying those laws, in defiance of their sworn oaths of office. In doing so, they are compromising the health, safety and security of the American people."