Newly released data indicates Homeland Security officials removed far fewer unauthorized immigrants from the United States this past fiscal year, but the department says the drop reflects efforts to prioritize catching those who present the most risk to the public.
The Department of Homeland Security released its annual report on immigration enforcement on Tuesday. It covers the period from Oct. 1, 2014, to Sept. 30, 2015.
The data show Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials deported 235,413 people in that period. That number was 315,943 in 2014, 368,644 in 2013 and an Obama administration high of 409,849 in 2012.
However, as the number of deportations dropped, the percentage of convicted criminals removed rose slightly. In 2012, about 55 percent of ICE removals were convicted criminals. That rose to 59 percent last year.
In a statement, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the data “reflect this Department’s increased focus on prioritizing convicted criminals and threats to public safety, border security and national security.” Officials said 86 percent of the deportations were “top priority” cases that were considered threats.
Crunching the numbers further, ICE reported about 91 percent of its nearly 70,000 interior removals – people who were living in the United States, rather than being caught as they tried to illegally cross the border – were convicted criminals, a 9 percent increase from 2013.
Officials also reported a stark drop in the number of people apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol.
The Border Patrol arrested 337,117 people in the past fiscal year, which the report said was the second-lowest yearly apprehension total since 1972. The number of arrests was 486,651 last year and 420,789 in 2012.
Johnson said that the consecutive drops reflect “a lower level of attempted illegal migration at our borders.” But not everyone with ties to the Border Patrol sees it that way.
“To me, if our numbers of arrests have gone down, that just means that we have missed more (people). The same number of people are getting in, we’re just taking in less,” Terence Shigg, the president of a local chapter of the National Border Patrol Council, told the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Homeland Security officials said 18 percent fewer Mexican nationals were apprehended in fiscal year 2015 than in fiscal year 2014. Arrests of people from other countries – mainly Central America – dropped about 68 percent. Officials also seized some 3.3 million pounds of narcotics.
“(Fiscal year) 2015 was a year of transition, during which our new policies focusing on public safety were being implemented,” Johnson said in a statement. “In (fiscal year) 2016 and beyond, I want to focus even more interior enforcement resources on removing convicted criminals.”
