New Data Shows Immigration Enforcement on Decline
New data that show the number of detainers issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents indicate that immigration enforcement efforts are down in recent months. The data issued by a government watchdog project at Syracuse University shows a considerable deterioration in enforcement levels since 2011. In the first four months of FY 2013, ICE agents issued an average of 18,427 detainers per month - down nearly 20% from the same period in FY 2012.
In FY 2012, the reports shows that ICE issued 273,982 detainers in FY 2012, but it's only on pace to issue 220,027 detainers in FY 2013. Since 2012, the Department of Homeland Security has issued a series of memos detailing the use of prosecutorial discretion in ICE's handling of illegal aliens.
The issuance of detainers is just the first step of the deportation process, and in no way does it indicate intent to deport an illegal alien. Once a detainer is issued, the agency's prosecutorial discretion policies would be considered. So while the decline in detainers issued does not necessarily correlate to a decline in deportations, it does indicate a decline in ICE activity.
According to Jessica Vaughan, an immigration enforcement export at the Center for Immigration Studies, claims that immigration enforcement has never been more robust because of "record-high" deportation numbers are false. Instead, she questions what the administration considers is a deportation.
"The answer, according to my earlier analysis, is that the record number of removals DHS is claiming is based not on more robust, smarter, more effective interior enforcement, but on new operational practices that funnel tens of thousands of aliens apprehended by the Border Patrol into ICE detention facilities long enough to be counted as a removal, not just once, but potentially multiple times," Vaughan wrote in a recent CIS blog. "The Border Patrol cases, which were never counted by DHS as removals before 2011, are numerous enough to mask the fact that interior enforcement has declined significantly in recent years.
"The Obama administration has cooked the deportation statistics in order to cover up the effects of its enforcement-suppressing policies and to create a bogus talking point on "record" deportations. This false factoid has been ardently repeated by mainstream media reporters who have suspended all skepticism and failed to dig beneath the DHS press releases, thereby missing the more important story of how enforcement in the interior has been decimated, and the consequences that has in our communities."
For more information, see the Center for Immigration Studies.