U.S. immigration officials deported approximately 12,000 family members and unaccompanied minors last fiscal year, according to a federal report released Wednesday.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 5,702 family members, a 110% jump from the prior year, according to its year-end report, which covers the period from Oct. 1, 2018, to Sept. 30, 2019. Officials also deported 6,351 people who crossed the U. S.- Mexico border as unaccompanied minors, a 14% increase. Some had arrived in the United States as long as five years ago.
The tally comes months after President Donald Trump expressed anger about the record influx of Central American parents and children surrendering at the U.S. border to seek asylum, thwarting his efforts to secure the U.S.-Mexico boundary and to increase arrests of migrants convicted of serious crimes inside the United States.
Trump threatened mass arrests of families last June, though his public proclamations about the mission upended the planned roundup, known as "Operation Border Resolve." The operation originally targeted 2,100 families but caught just 18 people.
Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Matthew Albence acknowledged then that the publicity likely depressed the number of arrests but said the family operation was "just the beginning."
Officials acknowledged in the report that the expulsions of families and unaccompanied minors were "a small fraction" of those who entered the United States during the fiscal year. More than 540,000 family members and unaccompanied minors crossed the border, and most were released into the United States, pushing the agency's docket of "non-detained" migrants past 3.2 million.
Officials said legal limits on detaining minors make it "extremely challenging" to deport them and their families.
Overall, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported more than 267,000 people last fiscal year, a 4% uptick from the year before and significantly lower than the peak of 400,000 annual deportations midway through President Barack Obama's administration.
Immigration arrests inside the United States -- which typically target convicted criminals -- hit their lowest point since Trump took office, with 143,000, down 10%. Arrests of convicted criminals also dropped 12%, to approximately 92,000.
Officials blamed the drop in arrests and fairly flat deportations on the influx of asylum-seeking parents and children at the border last year, which required officials to deploy 350 immigration agents to assist the Border Patrol instead of searching for criminals.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials also have said they are having a more difficult time making arrests in the interior of the United States because so-called sanctuary cities are refusing to help them.
Though the immigration agency expanded its daily average detention capacity from 33,000 to more than 50,000 a day under the Trump administration, the largest share of detainees were recent border crossers. Officials said deporting criminals remains the agency's top priority. Of the nearly 86,000 people deported from the interior of the United States last year, more than 90% had criminal convictions or pending charges.
Among those taken into custody, the top criminal offenders were drunk drivers, followed by those with traffic violations and drug offenses. Immigration officials said the agency also deported nearly 5,500 known or suspected gang members, slightly lower than fiscal 2018, while deportations of suspected terrorists rose from 42 to 58.
A Section on 12/12/2019