ICE Reveals an Agency Under Strain

The letter that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting director Patrick Lechleitner sent last week to US Representative Tony Gonzalez shows an agency under increasing strain after years of surging migrant border crossings.

Mr. Lechleitner was responding to an inquiry from Representative Gonzalez regarding the number of non-detained migrants currently in the US with criminal records.

The numbers surprised many Americans: as of July 21, 2024, there were over 435,000 noncitizens with criminal convictions in the US of which nearly 98% — over 425,000 — were not presently detained in an ICE facility.

Their crimes included: 62,231 for assault, 56,533 for dangerous drugs, 15,811 for sexual assault, and 13,099 for homicide, among others.

ICE later clarified that: (a) many of these convicted criminals had been in the US for decades and (b) these individuals were not necessarily out in the public — many could be in prisons — but ICE lacked the data to provide a breakdown (see here).

News media cited several reasons why ICE may not always be able to detain and eventually deport criminally convicted noncitizens. These reasons expose hurdles to ICE fulfilling its mission to protect US citizens (see here, here, and here):

Its efforts are sometimes frustrated by “sanctuary cities” that limit cooperation with ICE. For example, some cities do not honor requests from ICE to hold individuals for longer so the agency can pick them up and take them into custody.

Certain countries reject the return of migrants, and under a 2001 US Supreme Court ruling ICE cannot indefinitely hold a migrant whom no country will accept. In 2011, ICE indicated in congressional testimony that this ruling alone was resulting in the release of 4,000 convicted criminals into the US public annually (see here).

Lack of funding. Mr. Lechleitner’s letter revealed that ICE has capacity for 41,500 beds.

A final reason is policy choices. Every year, ICE deports convicted criminals. This figure grew to ~150,000 per year for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2019, but has sunk to under ~40,000 annually in recent years. ICE has also reduced its number of Enforcement and Removal Operations personnel.

The debate over immigration policy is complex and voters will have the ultimate say. ICE’s data release provides a deeper look at some of the challenges ahead.