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Deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) caught up to levels seen during the Trump administration in Fiscal Year 2024, just as the number of illegal immigrants not in ICE detention soared to new highs.
The annual ICE report released Wednesday shows that ICE deported 271,484 illegal immigrants to 192 different countries in fiscal year 2024. Of those, 32.7% had criminal histories and 237 were known or suspected terrorists.
It’s a significant increase from more than 142,000 deported in FY 23, and around 72,000 in FY 2022. In FY 2020, the last year of the Trump administration and which coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, there were around 185,000 deportations and in FY 2019 there were 267,000 deportations.
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However, those numbers also include removals of those encountered by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the border, which typically make up the vast majority of ICE deportations. Of removals of those arrested in the interior by ICE itself, just 47,000 illegal immigrants were deported, compared to 44,255 last fiscal year and 28,204 in FY 2022.
President-Elect Donald Trump at the Elysee Palace for a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Dec. 7, 2024 in Paris, France. (Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)
That compared to 62,739 in FY 2020 in the last full year of the Trump administration and 85,958 conducted in FY 2019, nearly double that of FY 2024.
ICE says that its resources were strained by having to shift staff and attention to the southern border to help with the migrant crisis, as well as an increase in those released into the interior.
"In addition, ERO detailed significant numbers of its personnel to support DHS efforts for managing irregular migration at the Southwest Border over the past several fiscal years, further straining ERO’s finite resources," the report says.
Consequently, it says the number of arrests by ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) dropped in FY 2024.
"In FY 2024, ERO arrested 113,431 noncitizens — a 33.5% decrease from FY 2023, when ERO conducted a total of 170,590 arrests," the report said. "Although shifts in arrest numbers are driven by multiple complex factors, many of ERO’s resources throughout FY 2024 were concentrated on processing and removing noncitizens at the Southwest Border, limiting interior law enforcement actions. This focus on border cases impacted routine interior enforcement operations."
Both ICE arrests and the number of deportations of those arrested by ICE are expected to increase under the next administration, which has indicated it intends to drop the restrictions put on ICE during the Biden administration and launch a "historic" mass deportation campaign.
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In this undated photo, ICE agents arrest an illegal immigrant. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE))
That promise was a centerpiece of Trump’s 2024 campaign and his team are already making concrete steps towards that goal. It has already drawn resistance from some Democrats, but also some support from others in cities that have been overwhelmed by the massive migrant influx that the country has seen since 2021.
The scope of that challenge is emphasized by the ICE report, which shows that the number of illegal immigrants on ICE's non-detained docket has exploded during the Biden administration to nearly 7.7 million, more than doubling what it was when Trump left office. It was at 3.2 million at the end of FY 2020.
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The non-detained docket is made up of illegal immigrants in deportation proceedings, who are not in ICE custody, but who may be in federal, state or local custody or in forms of monitoring.
This includes illegal immigrants who were caught and released at the border and are waiting for their court dates, as well as illegal aliens who have already been ordered deported by a DOJ immigration judge after already having their cases heard.
Fox has previously reported that there are over 1.4 million illegal immigrants in the US with final orders of removal, meaning they have been ordered deported but are still in the U.S. The report revealed that ther were more than 701,000 Venezuelan illegal immigrants on ICE's non-detained docket, but only 1,470 were in ICE detention.
Meanwhile, despite a surge into the U.S. of more than 500,000 unaccompanied migrant children into the U.S. during the Biden administration, just 411 were removed in FY 2024, an increase from the 212 in FY 2023. For comparison, more than 4,000 were removed in FY 20202.
Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital, primarily covering immigration and border security.
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