The number of migrants arrested who had crossed the southern border from Mexico illegally doubled in fiscal year 2022, but only about half of those were deported, according to numbers released Friday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
ICE reported in its year-end report that during FY 2022, which runs from Oct. 2021 to Sept. 30, 2022, agents completed 142,750 immigration arrests and 72,177 deportations. That represents increases of 93% arrests and 22% deportations, the New York Post noted.
The numbers are a fraction of the 185,884 illegal immigrants deported during the last year of former President Donald Trump's administration, and lower than the 267,258 sent back across the border in fiscal year 2019, the report said.
According to CBS News, the drop in arrests and deportations in FY 2021 was due to the coronavirus pandemic's impact on operations as well as new Biden administration policies that cut down the number of deportable immigrants agents were told to prioritize.
Republican critics have said Biden's border policies — essentially the reversing of several Trump executive orders on his first day in office — is to blame.
Those rules were struck down in June by federal courts after a lawsuit was filed by Republican-led states. Whether the Biden administration can reinstate the policies will be decided by the Supreme Court later this year.
On Friday, ICE Acting Director Tae Johnson told reporters the agency had dedicated significant resources to securing the southwest border and processing migrants.
"We detailed thousands of law enforcement officers to the southwest border to investigate human smuggling and human trafficking and assisted with processing of migrants into ICE’s Alternatives to Detention program to help ensure migrants being released by [Customs and Border Protection] were meeting their reporting and immigration obligations," Johnson said.
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