“Maybe we could use a a little softer treatmentbut youWe have to continue being tough. We are dealing with the worst criminals”. This is what the president of the United States referred to this week in a television interview, Donald Trumpto the operations being carried out by its immigration police, but the data, even if incomplete, demonstrate the falsehood of the premise.
He 74% of immigrants who were in ICE or Border Patrol custody in Januarythe two immigration, customs and border law enforcement agencies of the Department of Homeland Security, They have no criminal convictions or criminal records.according to the latest statistics made public by ICE itself.
These figures, which go up to January 25, and which have been provided with delaydo not include people held in facilities near the border for short-term detention, nor ICE field offices, courthouses and other locations where the agency holds people.
Of the 70,766 people in custody (the highest figure since there is data and the first time that the 70,000 barrier has been exceeded), more than 34,000 appear as neither convicted nor with pending chargessimply in custody for “other immigration violations.” There is something more 18,000 with pending criminal charges and many others already convicted, but according to TRAC, a data analysis center at Syracuse University, many of those with convictions have them for minor crimesincluding traffic violations.
The story and the reality
Trump is trying to recapture at least the official story following the social and political rejection that has been unleashed by the aggressive and lethal tactics deployed by federal agents in Minneapolis. After the deaths at the hands of those agents of Renée Nicole Good and, above all, Alex Pretti, the president took over the command of the operations and put Tom Homan, his ‘border czar’, in charge, who also arrived with a message of federal withdrawal in exchange for more collaboration from local and state authorities and an operation more concentrated on criminals.
Until now, in any case, National Security activity has not made distinctions and The number of people detained has practically doubled since a year ago, when Trump returned to the presidency.
Austin Kochera professor who previously researched for TRAC and now maintains a substack in which he provides and analyzes immigration data, has written that “since the summer practically all the increase in ICE detentions has come from people without criminal charges or convictionsan area of enormous sustained growth that contradicts the Administration’s narrative Trump that they focus on the worst of the worst.” Kocher raises the 92% the percentage of detainees in ICE custody (does not include the border agency CBP) who do not have any criminal record.
You have a body
Trump’s anti-immigration campaign, and his commitment to mass deportationsyou are running into another barrier. In this campaign, the Administration has made a policy change that has removed immigration judges an authority they had for decades, which allowed release on bail immigrants in detention who do not pose flight or public safety risks.
The lawyers of many of those detainees without criminal records, who Trump tries to keep in custody indefinitely but who have the right to fight for their cases unless they have a final deportation order or have been in the country for less than two years, are appealing to federal justice. They request you have a body for their clients and, according to an analysis of the cases carried out by ‘The New York Times’, they have achieved that many of those federal judges, not immigration ones, have released hundreds of detainees.
Some experts believe that Trump’s policy will end before the Supremo and that can be validated by the high court, but in the meantime the judicial system is being saturated with these cases.
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