Trump Administration Expands Interior Immigration Enforcement

Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released areport detailing deportations (henceforth “removals”) conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the fiscal year of 2017.  This post presents data on removals in historical context combined with information fromPew and theCenter for Migration Studies.  ICE deported 81,603 illegal immigrants from the  interior of the United States in 2017, up from 65,332 in 2016.  Removals from the interior peaked during the Obama administration in 2011 at 237,941 (Figure 1).  ICE also removed large numbers of people apprehended at the border.  Since 2012, border removals have outnumbered those from the interior of t he United States.Figure 1Interior and Border Removals by ICE, 2008-2017 Source: Immigration and Customs Enforcement.The Obama administration removed 1,242,486 from the  interior of the United States during its full eight years, averaging 155,311 removals per year.  Data from the earlier Bush administration are morespeculative but they show more deportations under Obama than under Bush.      The percentage of all illegal immigrants removed from the United States is a better measure of the intensity of interior enforcement than the total numbers removed (Figure 2).   Based on estimates of the total size of the illegal immigrant population fromPew, theCenter for Migration Studies, and my own guesstimates for 2016 and 2017, 0.74 percent of that population was removed from the interior of t...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs