After originally attempting to sideline immigration enforcement and sparking an unprecedented border crisis, President Joe Biden is now overseeing the largest deportation operation in a decade.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents deported more than 271,000 illegal migrants in fiscal year 2024, the highest number of removals since 2014, according to a new report released by the agency. The final tally for 2024 marks what has been a consistent increase in deportations undertaken by the Biden administration every year, with roughly 142,500 removals conducted in fiscal year 2023 and about 72,000 removals in fiscal year 2022.
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“Every year, our workforce faces tremendous challenges — but every year, they meet those challenges head-on,” ICE acting director Patrick Lechleitner said in a public statement about the data. “I believe we have one of the most adaptable and agile workforces in the federal government.”
However, this record-level of removals is not reflective of the approach Biden took when he first entered office. The Democrat, who campaigned on reversing then-President Donald Trump’s hardline enforcement agenda, entered office in January 2021 and immediately signed an executive order that placed a 100-day moratorium on nearly all deportations, one of many orders the Biden administration put forward in an attempt to shutter Trump-era enforcement policies.
While the 100-day moratorium order was ultimately blocked in court, the administration’s desire to soften enforcement actions was largely realized. ICE deportations plummeted to about 59,000 in fiscal year 2021, the lowest in the agency’s history.
While trying to mitigate interior enforcement, the Biden administration also worked diligently to roll back border security in its first year. The White House halted border wall construction, shuttered the Remain in Mexico program, ended Safe Third Country agreements with key Latin American nations and undertook other actions that opened up the country to illegal immigration.
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Altogether, the White House made 296 executive actions on immigration in its first year, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute.
What followed after these executive orders was an unprecedented level of unlawful migration into the United States. Fiscal year 2024 was the second worst year in history for illegal immigration, with nearly three million inadmissible encounters taking place, a number only surpassed by the record level experienced in fiscal year 2023. An analysis by the New York Times found the level of net migration into the U.S. under Biden — a number that will likely surpass eight million — has been the largest in the country’s history.
Faced with an American electorate growing increasingly frustrated with the southern border crisis and a tough presidential contest, Biden issued an executive order in June to dramatically tighten border security and doubled down on the policy in September.
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Fiscal year 2024’s deportations included a large number of individuals who posed an incredible risk to U.S. national security. Of the 271,000 foreign nationals who were removed, 237 were known or suspected terrorists, more than 88,700 had charges or convictions for criminal activity and more than 3,700 were known or suspected gang members, according to ICE’s report.
The removals experienced in fiscal year 2024 could be a drop in the bucket compared to what’s to come. Trump, who enters office in January for second term, has vowed to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history. Former ICE acting director Tom Homan, who the president-elect has chosen to serve as border czar, has also teased an unprecedented level of removals.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.