ICE Issues Half the Detainers for Criminal Aliens in Local Custody under Biden than Trump

Besides failing miserably to control illegal immigration at the southwest border, the Biden administration has also been shamefully derelict when it comes to interior enforcement, allowing hundreds of thousands of criminal aliens to remain in the country by issuing half the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers than the Trump administration. In one city the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) premier law enforcement agency has issued an astounding 13,398% fewer detainers under Biden, and another has seen a 1,179% drop compared to the previous administration. Seven American cities with substantial migrant populations have seen triple digit percentage drops in ICE detainers under the current president.

The hair-raising figures are included in a new report issued by the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. Stats obtained from the government are broken down by jurisdiction and interactive maps identify regions of the country where ICE issued detainers for migrants embroiled in the criminal system. Information about counties, states, local law enforcement agencies and the criminal aliens for which detainers were issued is also provided. From fiscal year 2021 through the first quarter of fiscal year 2024, the Biden administration has issued 295,456 detainers to 4,305 law enforcement agencies nationwide. The Trump administration issued around twice as many detainers with the most delivered in Los Angeles, California (20,318), followed by Houston, Texas (19,289) and Phoenix, Arizona (17,294). A dozen cities received 5,000 or more detainers when Trump was commander-in-chief and 25 got 3,000 or more, according to the report.

ICE detainers are a key tool to successfully conduct interior enforcement by apprehending and deporting criminals not authorized to remain in the U.S. In fact the agency says they are “critical” to identify and ultimately remove criminal aliens who are currently in federal, state or local custody. Officially it is a notice that DHS issues to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies informing them that ICE intends to assume custody of an individual in their custody. An immigration detainer serves three key functions, according to ICE: “1) to notify an LEA [law enforcement agency] that ICE intends to assume custody of an alien in the LEA’s custody once the alien is no longer subject to the LEA’s detention; 2) to request information from an LEA about an alien’s impending release so ICE may assume custody before the alien is released from the LEA’s custody; and 3) to request that the LEA maintain custody of an alien who would otherwise be released for a period not to exceed 48 hours (excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays) to provide ICE time to assume custody.” Not all police departments cooperate because many local governments have passed sanctuary measures that offer illegal immigrants, even those convicted of state crimes, sanctuary.

As a result, criminal aliens released inside the country are committing crimes against Americans at an alarming rate, according to a report published just weeks ago by the House Judiciary Committee. The probe found that, of the millions of illegal immigrants who have entered the United States under the Biden administration’s disastrous open border policies, over 617,000 have criminal records and they are victimizing Americans and terrorizing communities throughout the nation. “The Biden-Harris Administration’s radical policies ensure that criminal illegal aliens can remain in the United States indefinitely, even after they have committed a crime,” congressional investigators found. As an example, the congressional committee offers the case of four illegal immigrants from Venezuela who viciously attacked a man on a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) train earlier this year. DHS released one of the men inside the U.S. in 2022 and the other three in 2023 after crossing the Mexican border. Three of the men were on pretrial release after shoplifting arrests when they committed their most recent crime in the Windy City.

“For more than three-and-a-half years, President Joe Biden and ‘border czar’ Vice President Kamala Harris have orchestrated the largest mass release of illegal aliens into the country in American history,” federal lawmakers write in the report, adding that well over seven million illegal aliens have entered the U.S. under this administration. “The results are all too predictable: cities overwhelmed, public services crushed, and communities shattered by the criminality of some illegal aliens.”

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