Three Years of Biden Immigration Policies Have Benefitted Criminal Aliens
Comparing ICE criminal data from fiscal years 2017-2019 to 2021-2023
By Jon Feere on January 9, 2024
For three years the Biden administration has claimed that its policies are designed to focus on criminal aliens to a greater degree than the policies under the Trump administration. As DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas put it in a September 2021 memo, "By exercising our discretionary authority in a targeted way, we can focus our efforts on those who pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security and thus threaten America's well-being."
It is now clear that the promised outcome has not been met and that the Biden administration's policies have gutted the nation’s immigration enforcement system, with no concern about the number of criminal aliens that are being released into our communities.
Official data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reveals that the Biden administration has arrested and removed significantly fewer criminal aliens than the Trump administration. (This data comes from both ICE public releases as well as a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the Center for Immigration Studies.) Contrary to Secretary Mayorkas's claim, public safety and national security have been significantly undermined by the Biden administration’s reckless policies, and the threats the administration has created will continue to inflict damage on American society for many years to come.
This analysis compares the first three years of ICE criminal alien data under the Trump administration (FYs 2017, 2018, and 2019) to the first three years of ICE criminal alien data under the Biden administration (FYs 2021, 2022, and 2023), and finds that criminal aliens have been top beneficiaries of the Biden administration’s immigration agenda. A criminal alien is one who has a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges.
https://cis.org/Report/Three-Years-Biden-Immigration-Policies-Have-Benefitted-Criminal-Aliens
