ICE immigration arrests are declining as law enforcement focuses on border surge
Source: Washington Post
Immigration
ICE immigration arrests are declining as law enforcement focuses on border surge
By Nick Miroff
Reporter covering immigration enforcement, drug trafficking and national security
March 21 at 3:59 PM
The number of immigrants arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents is falling, according to agency statistics released Thursday, the latest sign that a border surge is diverting enforcement efforts away from the U.S. interior, dealing a blow to the Trump administration’s deportation goals.
Arrests by ICE agents fell 12 percent to 34,546 between Oct. 1 and Dec. 29 of last year, the most recent period for which data is available. Though deportations by ICE rose 10 percent during that period in comparison with the previous year, the increase came from soaring numbers of detentions at the border — not as a result of more arrests by ICE in the U.S. interior.
Nathalie Asher, a senior ICE official who coordinates detention and deportation operations, said an “explosion” of people crossing the border has forced ICE to reallocate resources. ... “What you’re looking at is our interior arrests have been affected,” Asher told reporters, noting that she has had to redirect resources to what she sees as the first priority, “addressing what has been occurring and continues to occur at an alarming rate at the border.”
The declining arrest numbers are a major change from the initial phase of the Trump presidency, when interior arrests rose by more than 20 percent and ICE officials said immigration violators “should look over your shoulder” in fear of arrest. ... That aggressive stance, along with public arrests outside courthouses and other sensitive locations, triggered a backlash among immigrant activists and some Democrats who called for the agency to be abolished. ... But the statistics released Thursday indicate the agency has diverted resources to cope with what Asher described as a “crushing” volume of arrivals at the border, especially parents bringing children. ICE has 6,000 agents assigned to arrest and deportation efforts, Asher said.
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Nick Miroff covers immigration enforcement, drug trafficking and the Department of Homeland Security on The Washington Post’s National Security desk. He was a Post foreign correspondent in Latin America from 2010 to 2017, and has been a staff writer since 2006. Follow https://twitter.com/NickMiroff
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/ice-immigration-arrests-are-declining-as-law-enforcement-focuses-on-border-surge/2019/03/21/5b84867c-4beb-11e9-b79a-961983b7e0cd_story.html
David Fahrenthold Retweeted
https://twitter.com/Fahrenthold
NEW In Trump's first year, swaggering ICE officials said the "shackles" were off & immigration violators should be "looking over their shoulder." Today, ICE announced falling arrest numbers, as a "crushing" volume of families diverts resources to border
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