Between January 25 and April 30 of 2016, under former President Obama’s administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division made 30,028 immigration-related arrests. During the same period this year, under President Trump, immigration-related arrests totaled 41,316, an increase of nearly 38 percent. Of those, 30,473, or nearly 75 percent, were criminal illegal aliens. According to an ICE press release, “Violent crimes such as homicide, rape, kidnapping and assault accounted for more than 2,700 convictions” racked up by the criminal aliens ICE has arrested this year.
This announcement comes on the heels of another revelation that ICE’s recent crackdown on illegal gang activities resulted in nearly 1,400 arrests, including 445 foreign nations and 222 members of the notorious MS-13 or Sureños gangs.
President Trump repeatedly promised during his campaign to enforce U.S. immigration laws, with a special focus on the apprehension and deportation of dangerous criminal aliens. According the Thomas Homan, acting Director of ICE, these arrests show that the president is keeping his promise so far: “These statistics reflect President Trump’s commitment to enforce our immigration laws fairly and across the board,” he said. “ICE agents and officers have been given clear direction to focus on threats to public safety and national security, which has resulted in a substantial increase in the arrest of convicted criminal aliens.”
Despite some setbacks, such as keeping DACA in place and conceding border wall funding as a part of the 2017 budget, the evidence indicates that President Trump not only remains committed to enforcing immigration laws in the United States, but that his efforts are already yielding results in some areas.