Sanctuary jurisdictions have protected more than 22,000 criminal illegal aliens from deportation since the start of the Biden-Harris administration, analysis of federal data reveals.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that from January 20, 2021, through July 15, 2024, sanctuary jurisdictions have helped more than 22,000 illegal aliens evade deportation from the United States despite Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents seeking to take them into custody.
“Each declined detainer represents a deportable criminal alien who was released back into the community and given the opportunity to prey on more victims,” CIS Director of Research Jessica Vaughan reports:
The number reported by ICE include detainers declined by the law enforcement agency with custody of the alien, cases in which the local law enforcement agency provided insufficient notice to ICE to arrive before the alien’s release, and early releases of aliens despite a detainer. [Emphasis added]
During President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s first year in office, sanctuary jurisdictions kept 2,500 criminal illegal aliens from being turned over to ICE agents.
The following year, in 2022, the number of ICE detainers that sanctuary jurisdictions refused to honor more than doubled to over 5,700 — indicating how the Biden-Harris administration emboldened such policies across the U.S.
In 2023, close to 8,000 ICE detainers were not honored by sanctuary jurisdictions and thus far this year, nearly 6,000 detainers have not been honored.
An incoming Trump administration is likely to take the issue head-on as former Attorney General Jeff Sessions did in 2017.
At the time, Sessions instituted a Department of Justice (DOJ) policy to block sanctuary jurisdictions from receiving Byrne JAG grants. As a result, several municipalities dropped their sanctuary policy.
By February 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously upheld Sessions’s policy — ensuring that it is entirely within the DOJ’s powers to set standards for federal grant applicants.
In April 2021, after Biden and Harris took office, the Sessions policy was ended.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
