Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are not following the guidelines that establish President Joe Biden’s deportation priorities and are arresting undocumented immigrants without having a criminal record or being a danger to national security.
This was revealed by the American Immigration Council, an organization that took official data from the immigration agency and found that the three categories for immigration detention do not make up the majority of detentions.
Agents classify more than a third of arrests in another category marked “other,” referring to reasons for arrest and removal proceedings.
“More than one-third (36.2 percent) of ICE enforcement actions… were carried out against individuals who did not fit within established public safety, border security, or homeland security priorities,” the data analysis says.
The experts from the civil organization made the analysis based on data obtained through Public Information (FOIA).
They confirmed that the arrest actions from February 23 to November 28, 2021 had a high percentage of classification as “other”, outside the categories: public safety, border security or national security.
“This data set, with more than 22,000 individual cases, provides greater insight into the timing, location, and other aspects of ICE enforcement actions during the enforcement of the 2021 memos,” the report says.
Analysts note that 90% of the time, supervisors of ICE field agents approved the officers’ requests to detain immigrants.
“Coercive measures against people who were not a priority” were taken, taking into account the guidelines of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which were endorsed by the Supreme Court.
“Despite specific policies established by the Secretary of DHS, ICE agents arrested and removed tens of thousands of people not designated as priority,” criticizes the report.
He adds that these results undermine the statements of Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who has presumed that undocumented immigrants would not be detained just for being undocumented.
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