Border arrests hit 45-year-low
‘New recognition’ under Trump has fewer deported
Ronald D. Vitiello, acting deputy commissioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said Trump administration policies have discouraged illegal immigration, leading to a drop in border arrests. The agency also called on Congress to change asylum laws and fund a border wall.
Plummeting illegal immigration resulted in fewer arrests by the Border Patrol and fewer deportations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the fiscal year that ended in September, Homeland Security officials said Tuesday.
The agency also took the unusual step of calling on Congress to change asylum laws and fund a border wall. The officials also complained openly about the policies of former President Barack Obama.
The number of deportations by ICE fell 5 percent to 226,119 in the period from October 2016 through September.
45-year-low
The new numbers, which offer the most complete snapshot yet of immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump, show that Border Patrol arrests plunged to a 45year low in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, with far fewer people being apprehended between official border crossings.
Deportations from the interior of the country increased 25 percent to 81,603, according to ICE numbers released Tuesday.
ICE was criticized this year after Trump lifted Obama-era restrictions on who can be targeted for deportation.
“There has to be a consequence or deterrence to illegal activity or the illegal activity won’t stop,” said Thomas Homan, ICE’s deputy director. “The success we’ve enjoyed so far this year is based on the messaging we’re sending is, ‘There is no free pass here. If you’re lucky enough to get by the Border Patrol we’re still looking for you.’ ”
“There’s a new recognition by would-be immigrants that the U.S. is not hanging up a welcome sign,” Michelle Mittelstadt, of the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute think tank, told the Associated Press. She pointed to Trump’s rhetoric, as well as his policies. “I think there’s a sense that the U.S. is less hospitable.”
But Mittelstadt also stressed that the numbers are part of a larger trend that began well before Trump’s inauguration: Mexico’s improving economy and more opportunities at home have stemmed the tide of people flowing across the border for work.
Border Patrol agents arrested 310,531 people from October 2016 through September, which included the last few months of the Obama administration. The numbers plummeted at the beginning of the year, after Trump took office, but slowly climbed after the spring driven largely by families and unaccompanied children from Central America who come to the U.S. and request asylum.
More than half of those apprehended were from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
‘Perspectives changing’
Despite those increases since May, Border Patrol apprehensions were down 25 percent from the 415,816 apprehended in fiscal 2016.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Ronald Vitiello, the acting deputy commissioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, credited Trump administration policies that he said discouraged illegal immigration.
“I think it is about … people recognizing they’re not going to be successful, or they’ll be less successful based on the messages being sent, ‘We’re going to end catch and release,’ ” he said. “And then there’s a real determination all the way up the chain to enforce existing law. And then that led to people’s perspectives changing and fewer of them deciding to make the journey.”
Later, however, Vitiello said immigration officials’ hands are tied because of federal laws prescribing how immigration officials should treat asylum seekers and immigrant children.
He called on Congress to change the law and eliminate what he called “loopholes” in the asylum system.
“We’d like to see the laws changed in a way that allows those people to have and make claims when they’re still being trafficked, and then obviously their due process in the administrative procedures, then have them removed rather than released into the United States,” he said.