ICE Deportations and Imprisonments Reach Record Numbers
Documents show that the U
Photo: Unsplash/@lensinkmitchel
Documents show that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reached record numbers when it comes to deportations and imprisonment in 2018. It had already been reported that ICE detainments had skyrocketed since Donald Trump was elected president, and this latest figures show it’s only getting worse.
According to data gathered by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), ICE has ordered 287,741 new deportations in the fiscal year ending on September 30, 2018, CBS News reports. The figures show an increase that hasn’t been seen since 1992.
“It’s a confirmation of everything we’ve seen coming,” Camille Mackler, director of immigration legal policy at the New York Immigration Coalition, told CBS News. “They’ve been arresting everyone and pushing for more deportations.”
The state with the most deportations is Texas, which makes sense since it’s a border state. However, that figure is telling because it shows that a large number of deportations isn’t based on aggravated felony charges, as CBS News reports, but rather just based on people being Mexican nationalists.
Mackler tells CBS News that the increase in these deportation filings comes from Trump’s policies and not because there’s an increase in immigration to the U.S, which means people being deported have been living in the U.S. for a long time.
In other news reports, The Daily Beast is reporting that the number of ICE imprisonments — people that have yet to be deported but are jailed in U.S. detention centers — this year alone stands at 44,000.
“ICE takes people from American homes and communities in early morning raids, from courtrooms and workplaces, and from the border where they arrive seeking safety and protection, and jails them thousands of miles from their lawyers and their loved ones. Inside, they suffer solitary confinement, unsafe conditions, and severe isolation,” Heidi Altman, the National Immigration Justice Center’s policy director, told The Daily Beast.
