Trump Administration Increases Immigration Enforcement at Businesses

President Trump ’s administration has increased immigration enforcement at worksites, just as he promised.  Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 2,304 people at worksites in the fiscal year 2018, a more than 7-fold increase from the previous fiscal year and about 6.7-fold more than the last full ye ar of the Obama administration. ICE ’s worksite arrests fall into two categories: criminal or administrative.  Any citizen or noncitizen whom ICE suspects of having committed a criminal violation, such as identity fraud, can be arrested.  Administrative arrests are for civil violators of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which means that only non-citizens can be arrested for such violations.  An administrative arrest is usually the first step toward deportation for an immigrant. ICE doesn ’t make most of its initial administrative arrests as it relies on other law enforcement agencies to arrest illegal immigrants, but it does directly arrest those at worksites in these cases.Figure 1 shows the rapid and recent increase in all ICE criminal and administrative arrests.   The number of arrests peaked in 2008 at 6,287 after several steady years of increases, but then declined during Obama’s presidency with a single blip in 2011.Figure 1All ICE Arrests at WorksitesSources: Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Congressional Research Service.President Trump ’s ICE is making more administrative arrests and a greater percentage of those come from wo...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs