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US Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 271,484 immigrants last fiscal year, marking the highest level of deportations since 2014, according to a newly released report.
CNN reports that although President-elect Donald Trump has rebuked President Joe Biden’s immigration policy while vowing to make mass deportations a cornerstone of his administration, the latest ICE data reveals that the Biden administration carried out a considerable number of removals last fiscal year. It exceeded the previous two years of Biden’s presidency and focused on public safety and national security threats.
Many of the deportations were of people who crossed the US-Mexico border illegally which reflects the challenge the administration officials faced along the southern border amid record migration across the globe. ICE removed people to nearly 200 different countries, according to the report which covers October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024.
Meanwhile, as Trump aides try to sell their plans to detain and deport undocumented immigrants on a large scale, they are also bracing to face what Biden and his predecessors grappled with in one of the key immigration agencies: limited resources and personnel.
In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Tom Homan, who Trump has picked to man the border, said he would need a minimum of 100,000 beds to detain undocumented immigrants and more ICE agents. The agency has around 6,999 immigration enforcement officers. he said, “We want to arrest as many people as we can that are in the country illegally.”
ICE’s latest report reveals that of the 271,484 removals carried out last fiscal year, around 32% of those were people with criminal histories. It’s enforcement and removal branch also arrested 113,431 immigrants, down from the previous year. Of those, 81,312 were convicted criminals or had pending criminal charges at the time of arrest.
Around 1.4 million people who live have final orders of removal. However, many of them can’t be sent back to their home countries because they won’t take them or there’s still some sort of potential relief available to them through the immigration system.
