Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to deport millions of immigrants, arguing his administration would remove violent criminals other presidents never could. Since taking office, the administration has often touted the latest immigration arrests with wanted-style posters and slogans likes like “Make America Safe Again.”
However, despite framing these arrests as key moves to protect public safety against the worst of the worst, at least half of the 72 high-profile apprehensions the administration has publicized involved people who were already in prison, according to an analysis from The Washington Post, while at least a dozen had been deported before and 17 were known to authorities and on parole or probation.
The administration’s rogue’s gallery included Jhon Gerald Urrutia, a Venezuelan man convicted of robbery and credit card fraud in Florida, detained by the Obama administration, then released from immigration custody under Trump in 2017, according to the paper, though the latest immigration arrest bulletin didn’t mention that final fact.
In another case, detectives in Kentucky said they were alarmed over the immigration arrest of Horacio Mejia, a Guatemalan immigrant who has been deported before, who is accused of raping a child. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Tennessee took credit for getting Mejia “off their streets,” but it was local police who arrested him, and they now worry Mejia could be deported and make his way back to the U.S. once again rather than face charges.
“I worry about the risk of him coming back,” Sergeant Jeff Parsons of Alcoa, Tennessee, told the Post.
The administration has faced continued scrutiny over immigration figures that haven’t matched the president’s promises to swiftly remove millions of violent criminals from the country.
The administration has admitted not only that “many” of the more than 200 Venezuelans sent to El Salvador’s notorious “tropical gulag” this month lack criminal convictions, but that some are not in fact members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang the administration is targeting with the operation in the first place.
In February, the administration disclosed that among the 178 immigrants who were being held temporarily at the Guantánamo naval base, supposedly among the worst of the worst, nearly one-third of detainees were considered “lower-threat” and likely did not have any serious criminal records, according to court filings.
Also that month, Caleb Vitello was removed as acting director of ICE, amid reported anger at the slower-than-desired pace of deportations and arrests.
“It’s driving him nuts they’re not deporting more people,” a White House insider told NBC News of Trump’s mindset at the time.
The administration has blamed leakers and members of the media for foiling immigration operations and slowing the pace of the campaign, though other factors are likely at play, including the cloud of lawsuits over the administration, the recent two-decade low in border arrests, and the decision to fire numerous immigration judges.
In Trump’s first six weeks in office, the administration has removed removed 27,772 people, or an average of 661 people per day, Axios reports, an 11 percent decrease from the average during the final year of the Biden administration.
