ICE Issues Dismal FY 2024 Annual Report
A picture of what happens when you don’t take the immigration laws seriously
By Andrew R. Arthur on December 21, 2024
ICE issued its “Annual Report, Fiscal Year 2024” this week. Notwithstanding headlines like “U.S. deportations at highest level since 2014, ICE report shows” (from the Washington Post), the report is a dismal snapshot of the state of immigration (non-) enforcement in the waning days of the Biden-Harris administration — and reveals just how much work incoming “border czar” Tom Homan has waiting for him. The agency is only doing marginally better compared to its poor performance over the prior two fiscal years — except for interior arrests, where it’s doing worse—and that’s all by design.
ICE Interior Enforcement. I will actually give the Post credit, because if you know how the immigration-enforcement system is supposed to work, its article tells you all that you need to know upfront. Here’s how it begins:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 271,484 immigrants to nearly 200 countries last fiscal year, the highest tally in a decade, according to the agency’s annual report published Thursday.
Most deportees had crossed the U.S. southern border illegally, part of a record number of people fleeing authoritarian regimes, poverty and economic collapse in the Western Hemisphere after the pandemic. The ICE report covered enforcement operations from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30.
https://cis.org/Arthur/ICE-Issues-Dismal-FY-2024-Annual-Report
