How Joe Biden Effectively Ended Deportations

President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance as president does not simply happen by accident; it takes planning. In the name of transforming America, every one of the Biden administration’s actions harm Americans while favoring core Democratic constituencies. America’s uncontrolled border with Mexico offers a perfect illustration of the way Biden’s intended policies leave U.S. citizens unprotected, while shielding lawbreakers from the consequences of their actions.

Fiscal year 2021, which began in October 2020, broke the record for the largest influx of illegal immigrants in U.S. history on record. As more than 1.7 million illegal aliens crossed the southern border during that 12 month period, deportations fell by 90% over pre-pandemic levels from January 21 to July 9, even as illegal immigration skyrocketed.

“Immigration enforcement, as measured by the number of aliens removed from the country, has collapsed to the lowest level since the mid-1990s, according to ICE deportation records the Center has obtained. Under policies imposed by the Biden administration, removals dropped by 80 percent since last year’s low point during the pandemic lockdown, and by 90 percent since 2019, the last normal year for ICE operations,” wrote Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. “The number of aliens removed who had serious criminal convictions also has declined by over 50 percent from 2020 and by 65 percent since 2019.”

The Biden administration, like the Obama-Biden administration, has constantly blamed the lack of deportations on “limited resources,” but the numbers give the lie to this. In March 2011, then-ICE Director John Morton wrote that ICE “only has resources to remove approximately 400,000 aliens per year,” and ICE removed 396,906 illegal immigrants that year. Yet in the intervening decade, ICE has added more officers (and more taxpayers’ funding), while slashing the level of deportations. “[W]hen Morton made that claim, ICE had 20,142 employees and a budget of $5.342 billion,” wrote Andrew R. Arthur of CIS. “By FY 2021, ICE had funding for 21,102 employees (a modest increase of almost 4.8 percent) and a budget of $7.875 billion (a significantly less modest 47.4 percent increase).” But, according to the report Vaughan cited, ICE removed only 62,000 illegal immigrants in the 2021 fiscal year which, Arthur noted, represents “a decrease of more than 84 percent since FY 2011.”

The precipitous drop in deportations certainly does not stem from a lack of opportunity. Border Patrol agents encountered a total of 1,734,686 illegal immigrants at the southern border during FY 2021. The artificial reduction has nothing whatsoever to do with Border Patrol agents’ inability or unwillingness to do their job. Deportations have plummeted because of deliberate policies crafted before Joe Biden came to power and enacted by the Democratic administration since literally its first day in the White House.

A chronological account of how Joe Biden opened America’s borders

During the 2020 presidential election, candidates Biden and Kamala Harris promised “free” health care for anyone who could reach U.S. shores and rolled out an eight-year amnesty plan that would grant U.S. citizenship to most illegal immigrants in the country. The Democrats began prioritizing illegal immigrants from day one.

On his first day in office, Joe Biden signed a flurry of executive orders that terminated construction of President Donald Trump’s border wall, ended President Trump’s anti-terror travel ban, and ordered the Census Bureau to count illegal immigrants toward a state’s population “for purposes of congressional representation, without regard to whether its residents are in lawful immigration status.” The last policy rewarded states and localities that turn a blind eye to illegal immigration with a greater voice in Congress and a larger claim on federal funds.

The same day, January 20, Biden’s political appointees made it more difficult for border enforcement agents to do their jobs. Then-Acting DHS Secretary David Pekoske issued a memo decreeing that, henceforth, the department would “prioritize” deporting illegal aliens who fell into one of three categories: those suspected of threatening national security, those convicted and released from jail after committing an “aggravated felony,” and those “who were not physically present in the United States before November 1, 2020.” In practice, that meant the Biden administration would deport virtually no one who did not fall into one of those categories.

Subsequent policies hardly improved the situation. On February 18, Acting ICE Director Tae Johnson broadened the categories a bit, graciously allowing ICE to deport illegal aliens who “intentionally participated in an organized criminal gang … to further the illegal activity of the gang or transnational criminal organization” and are at least 16 years old.

As illegal border crossings exploded compared to pre-pandemic levels, President Biden signaled his desire to further deprive ICE of enforcement resources. In June, President Biden requested only enough funds to detain 30,000 illegal immigrants a day — a reduction of 1,500 from the previous year, despite higher illegal foot traffic along the Southwest Border.

The Biden administration also moved to make