Since President Donald Trump took office, Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests have already surpassed the arrests throughout 2024, the agency said Wednesday – the Biden administration has said it is “cooking books” to that number.
“We've revealed that the previous administration was cooking books on ice data,” acting ice director Todd Lyons told reporters. “They intentionally mislead Americans by categorizing individuals who were processed as ice arrests and released within the United States.”
“Here, a comprehensive review was conducted internally on ice. In fact, we found tens of thousands of cases recorded as arrests if these cases were simply handled and illegal aliens released to the American community,” he said.
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Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests have already surpassed the arrests throughout 2024 since President Donald Trump took office. (ice)
The senior official said the majority of the 113,431 arrests made in 2024 were “pass-through” arrests. This means that ICE was told not to take enforcement action against those foreigners and instead to pass through the ice before passing through it and report it to the ice office.
They stressed that none of the ice arrests under the Trump administration were pass-through arrests.
“What we're doing now is not enforcement theatres, but actual immigration enforcement,” the official said.
Regarding internal arrests, in 2024, ice enforcement removal work led to massive arrests of 33,242 people, just 29% of all ice outages. For comparison, authorities say ICE made 32,809 arrests between January 20th and March 10th. This means that this week's number will exceed the number for 2024.
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None of the ice arrests under the Trump administration are pass-through arrests. (Ice Seattle)
Of these arrests, 14,111 have been found guilty and 9,980 have pending criminal charges. More than 1,150 people were suspected of being gang members, and 483 were twice as many as 2 and a half arrested in the same period last year.
“The difference between these recent arrests and last year's arrests is that they take enforcement action against all illegal aliens who have actually been arrested,” the official said.
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The Trump administration launched a “historic” deportation campaign and took office on a promise to reverse the Biden-era crisis at the tropical border. It quickly reversed the Biden-era parole program, surged military forces at borders, regaining citizens by limiting exile from certain countries and using protected agreements. They also launched many raids in “sanctuary” cities that refused to cooperate with ice enforcement.
The administration says that not only has a sharp increase in arrests, but also a significant decrease in encounters at tropical borders, and efforts have already been effective. Just this week, the Department of Homeland Security announced it had replaced the controversial CBP One app with a new CBP Home app that will help promote self-report.
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“We're empowering [ICE agents] “To do their job,” Lyon said.
Bill Melugin and Brooke Taylor of Fox News contributed to this report.
