Community roundups of illegal immigrants were nearly 30 percent higher under former President Obama than under President Trump, according to a new analysis that calls into question charges from pro-immigrant groups that Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests have exploded.
Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse report on more than two million arrests between October 2008 and June 2018 said that the most Trump’s ICE arrested in one month was 4,275 in March 2017, below the 6,001 under Obama in July 2009.
The report added that just 25 percent of ICE arrests have been made in communities versus transfers from jails and state and local offices.
An analysis of the figures by the Center for Immigration Studies added, “Of ICE arrests in the first three-quarters of FY 2018, 25 percent were ‘community arrests,’ according to TRAC, that is ‘individuals arrested at their home, place of work, or elsewhere in the wider community including at courthouses or at DHS offices when the immigrant had appeared for an appointment.’”
Several groups and media outlets have charged that ICE is conducting raids in neighborhoods, rounding up unsuspecting illegal immigrants who have committed no crime beyond entering the nation without permission.
The numbers, however, tell a different story and show that most arrests have been made through official paths.
“According to the report, 22 percent of aliens arrested by ICE in the first nine months of FY 2018 were apprehended in state and federal prisons, while an additional 41 percent were apprehended at local jails,” said the CIS analysis.
And overall, the number of Trump-era arrests has not come close to those under Obama’s highs, though they have topped the Obama arrest totals during his last two years in office.
Said CIS: “The number of monthly ICE arrests has increased under the Trump administration from the end of the Obama administration, going from a low of 8,005 ICE arrests in January 2016 to a high of 14,369 arrests in August 2017. In the latest month for which ICE arrests were reported (June 2018), 13,221 occurred. While significant, this is well below the high of ICE arrests (28,767) in March 2011.”
