Fact check: Critics call ICE a ‘deportation force.’ Are they right?

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With “abolish ICE” a rallying cry on the left, the very existence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — along with what it is and isn’t — has been called into question.

“I don’t think ICE today is working as intended,” one of the most prominent “abolish ICE” lawmakers, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said recently. “I believe that it has become a deportation force.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., called it the “craziest position I’ve ever seen.” On Wednesday, the House approved a non-binding resolution supporting ICE and denouncing calls to abolish the nearly 20-year-old agency. A large portion of House Democrats voted “present,” instead of voting for or against the proposal. A similar bill is awaiting a vote in the Senate, too.

Let’s take a look at the facts about ICE.

What does it do?

Immigration and Customs Enforcement apprehends, detains and deports undocumented immigrants, while also investigating transborder criminal activity, like gangs, human trafficking and smuggling.

While most apprehensions are done by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — which operates along the border and at ports of entry, and does nearly all its apprehensions in those places — ICE apprehensions are often more visible because they’re conducted inside the U.S., including at people’s homes or workplaces. Those taken into custody by ICE are more likely to be established within their communities, or long-term residents.

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ICE also runs 116 detention centers nationwide and when detainees are ordered to be deported, the agency arranges for their transportation, sometimes by plane with ICE “Air Operations,” which reportedly shackles passengers who are flown back to their home countries.

ICE does not police the border, nor was it the agency recently separating children from their families at the border — that was CBP — but parents referred for prosecution were held in ICE detention centers while the children were sent to the Department of Health and Human Services for care.

With a budget of around $6 billion annually, ICE is staffed by 20,000 employees in more than 400 offices across the U.S. and 46 foreign countries, according to the agency.

When did ICE start?

It was founded in 2003, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, when the Immigration and Naturalization Services was split up and the Department of Homeland Security was created. Three new agencies were formed in the massive reorganization and housed under DHS: ICE, CBP, and Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which handles visas, green cards and naturalization.

“None of the terrorists in 9/11 came from Mexico, but this national security and public safety mentality has come to affect ICE in all of its dealings with immigrants,” said Kevin Johnson, the dean at University of California, Davis, School of Law.

The agency was smaller when it began, but set a goal of 100 percent removal of all undocumented immigrants in its 10-year plan, “Operation Endgame.” It’s a policy that largely tracks with what President Donald Trump has called for, although critics dispute the idea that deporting undocumented immigrants makes the U.S. safer. There is no evidence supporting the president’s claim that immigrants are more dangerous than people born in the U.S.

The deportation numbers

In fiscal year 2017, ICE deported 226,119 people, less than the previous year’s 240,255 deportations.

But more of those deportations stemmed from ICE arrests, the agency said in a press release crediting it to Trump’s directives.

Still, it’s significantly below the Obama administration’s deportations at their peak; in fiscal year 2012, 409,849 were deported.

And while the Trump White House says those who are being deported are individuals with a criminal history, it has broadened the definition of what makes a criminal. The administration said 92 percent of those deported in fiscal year 2017 had a criminal history, but that includes those who have been charged — but not convicted — as well as those found with a past deportation order.

Trump’s immigration policies consider anyone who crosses the border illegally (a misdemeanor offense), who has been charged with a crime, or even an individual believed by authorities to have broken the law — even if they have not been charged with any crime — worth targeting.

“You can’t want to be part of this country and not respect its laws,” former ICE acting director Thomas Homan told Fox News recently, in which he stressed a criminal history of the majority of deported immigrants. “ICE protects your communities and we’re going to do it without apology.”

Has the agency changed under Trump?

When Trump took office, he signed a series of executive orders on immigration; one called for ICE to hire 10,000 more agents to identify and deport more undocumented immigrants. Congress has so far declined to fund that plan.

Trump also sought far more aggressive immigration enforcement than ICE had done in the past, eliminating the policy of prioritizing only dangerous criminals for deportation that President Barack Obama pushed in the final years of his administration. Under Trump, any undocumented immigrant who crossed the border illegally or used a fake Social Security number in order to a get a job can be targeted for deportation.

Johnson said the president’s rhetoric has encouraged agents to enforce the law “to the hilt.”

“We’ve seen a new enthusiasm and aggressiveness and a public persona that had not previously been seen,” Johnson told NBC News. “Certainly under President Trump, it is the deportation arm of the U.S. government.”