Both conservative and mainstream media outlets were flooded with the bombshell news in late September that there were hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants with criminal convictions on the non-detained docket currently in the U.S. Their charges include sexual assault, criminal pedophilia and even homicide — and these individuals are roaming American streets, neither detained nor tracked in any meaningful capacity.

But much coverage, including that from hardline border security experts, was focused on the entry date associated with each criminal, neglecting the more concerning issue: Why are they still in this country, and moreover, if they are here, why aren’t they in ICE custody? ICE leadership has repeatedly claimed that their hands are tied regarding detention due to budgetary limits — yet detention beds are still sitting empty and have been throughout the entire Biden-Harris Administration.

While we know the Trump administration and Biden-Harris administration managed interior enforcement in vastly different ways, one simply needs to look at the data. Migrant encounters more than tripled from the Trump administration to the Biden-Harris administration, yet overall ICE removals plummeted — from roughly 30% under Trump, to just 4% under Biden and Harris, according to data obtained from ICE’s annual reporting.........

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