In fact, it booked far more noncriminals into ICE custody than the criminals it was releasing — effectively replacing the criminals in its detention facilities with people with no criminal charges or convictions. For instance, in May 2018, ICE released more than 3,000 individuals with criminal convictions or charges pending while booking more than 19,000 without any record.
Recall that in May 2018, the Trump administration was in the process of a massive family separation operation, taking children away from migrant parents who were detained by Border Patrol. The Justice Department’s inspector general reported that for the assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Texas, the policy “had a considerable effect on his office’s resources and affected their ability to prosecute other substantive crimes.” The inspector general also concluded that sex offenders weren’t being prosecuted because resources were going to family separation.
Then, when the pandemic hit, the Trump White House forced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue an order under Title 42 of the U.S. health code that mandated the immediate expulsion of illegal crossers, in an attempt to block people from seeking asylum. But that order also eliminated any criminal penalties for crossing, meaning that any deported criminals who tried reentering and were caught weren’t detained or sent to prison; they were merely returned to Mexico within hours to try again and again.
The result: Arrests of convicted criminals trying to enter the United States illegally jumped threefold. Many were able to evade Border Patrol, and some went on to commit violent acts in the United States.