The Department of Homeland Security arrested more than a half million people in 2016 for immigration purposes, and the far majority of the arrests occurred at or near the nation's borders.
According to government data released Friday, 415,816 of the 530,250 people arrested by the agency were taken in by the U.S. Border Patrol. The remaining 114,434 people arrested on immigration charges were apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The arrest numbers regarding the Border Patrol jumped up from 337,117 in 2015.
Other key figures in the data:
- The U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped 274,821 people at U.S. ports of entry, up from 253,509 in 2015.
- Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed or returned 240,255 people, up from 235,413 in 2015.
- Immigration agents initiated new enforcement actions on 805,071 people.
"We continued to strengthen the federal government's decades-long investment in border security. These investments have paid off," Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said in the report. "Apprehensions on the border in recent years — a strong indicator of total attempts to cross the border — are much lower than they used to be.
"In FY 2016, total apprehensions by the Border Patrol on the southwest border numbered 408,870. This represents a fraction of the number of apprehensions routinely observed from the 1980s through 2008."
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