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Updated: December 21, 2025 @ 6:40 am
Consistent with campaign promises, the first year of Trump’s presidency saw a noticeable uptick in immigration enforcement — unfortunately, much of it was against noncriminal undocumented immigrants.
According to data released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency last month, both arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants without a criminal conviction increased significantly from prior years.
Of the 143,470 administrative arrests made in fiscal year 2017, more than one in four of those arrested did not have a criminal conviction, with 10.8 percent not having any criminal record at all. Notably, “at-large” arrests, those which occur in the community, increased significantly — from 30,348 in fiscal year 2016 to 40,066.
Additionally, whereas just 5,014 of those deported from the interior of the country in 2016 were people without a criminal conviction, in 2017 that number jumped to 13,744, according to ICE.
“The president has made it clear in his executive orders: There’s no population off the table,” Thomas Homan, acting director of ICE explained at a Dec. 5 news conference. “If you’re in this country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re going to look to apprehend you.”
This seems like a poor use of federal resources. While the priority of immigration enforcement continues, rightly, to be on removing people who engage in criminal activity in the U.S., the increased enforcement against non-criminal immigrants seems less likely to yield tangible benefits to the American people.
Interestingly, Homan also pointed out that “sanctuary” jurisdictions, in attempting to curtail state and local cooperation with federal immigration officials, have actually made it more likely that arrests of non-criminals will occur.
Sanctuary policies limiting federal immigration authorities’ access to jails and prisons, according to Homan, are merely pushing ICE to step up “at-large” operations.
“Chances are, when we go to their homes or places of business, we’re going to find other illegal aliens that weren’t even on our radar to begin with — now they’re on our radar,” Homan said, adding, “Sanctuary cities protecting their communities? No. They put communities more at risk for more arrests.”
At the very least, it is something that supporters of sanctuary policies should consider, especially in California, where Senate Bill 54 was recently enacted to limit state cooperation with federal immigration officials. The law, which was built up over the course of a year primarily as a show of some California lawmakers’ resistance to the Trump administration, could end up putting many non-criminal undocumented immigrants at risk of being caught up in immigration enforcement efforts.
That would be the sort of unintended consequence that on balance would benefit no one — those in support of creating a pathway for non-criminal undocumented immigrants to stay and those who want the focus to be on criminals alike would have their wishes thwarted for little more than political gamesmanship.
While the Congress sorts out its game of chicken on immigration, particularly DACA and the border wall, close attention should be paid to the effects of sanctuary policies on eliciting greater enforcement against non-criminals. We also encourage prioritizing serious and violent criminals for immigration enforcement efforts.
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(5) comments
If they are illegal aliens, they are not suppose to be here to begin with. Whether they are gang members or kitchen help, if they are illegal, they need to be deported. You cant cherry pick which illegal aliens to keep and which to boot out. All illegal aliens need to be booted.
Oh, now the dimms are sorry they didn't work with the president instead of against. No compromise is their new(old) motto!
What are you talking about? Yours is an incredibly stupid comment even for a Russian bot.Dimms? What are you, 5 years old ?
California law enforcement publically surrendered their enforcement of illegal immigration in our country and clearly stated that this was not their jurisdiction. They told the Feds that if they want illegals in California, get them yourself as this is not an issue we will use resources to assist. OK fine - that means that ICE will have a bigger presence in California and a lot more people in our state who are here illegally will be deported. I for one welcome ICE and having local law enforcement step to the sidelines. Maybe now we can avoid what happened to the Bologna and Steinle families.
ICE targets the bad criminals because their resources are limited. During operations they do get some non-criminals because they are in the close proximity of the targeted individuals. If a person is law-abiding person does not have status - stay away from the bad hombres.
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