Homan: 80 Percent of Biden Deportations From Border, Not Interior

Incoming border czar Tom Homan said that the Biden administration's most recent deportation numbers might appear to be high, but they don't tell the whole story of illegal immigrant removal efforts.

According to a report released Thursday by the Biden administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported more than 271,000 foreign nationals in fiscal year 2024 — the largest number removed from the United States in 10 years.

But Homan told the Daily Caller that those numbers were largely the result of apprehensions by Border Patrol and not due to immigration enforcement efforts by ICE inside the country.

"I've talked to sources at ICE, and over 80% of those deportations were border apprehensions," Homan told the Daily Caller shortly after the data was released. "They weren't ICE arrests, they were Border Patrol arrests."

"Interior arrests are still at an all-time low," he added.

When President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he immediately began to dismantle the Trump-era immigration measures with a number of executive orders that limited enforcement, including a 100-day moratorium on most removals.

In fiscal year 2021, Biden's efforts culminated in approximately 59,000 ICE deportations, which is the lowest number the agency has ever recorded.

Despite the slow start, deportations rose steadily during Biden's term in office, hitting approximately 72,000 in fiscal year 2022 and 142,500 in fiscal year 2023.

Rather than being removals of illegal migrants caught by ICE in the country's interior, the deportation numbers from fiscal year 2024 are mainly the result of illegals being detained by Border Patrol and then transferred to ICE.

"Most of those were Border Patrol arrests, just processed by ERO [Enforcement and Removal Operations]," Homan told the Daily Caller. "This wasn't really ICE work, this was Border Patrol work."

"Interior arrests are way down, this is an embarrassment for them," he said.

Homan said that the numbers from Biden's last year as president will soon be dwarfed by the Trump administration's huge deportation operation, which will target criminal illegal migrants across the country. Homan also accused Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of shirking his commitment of deporting criminal migrants.

"The number of criminals are a very small fraction of the total deportations," Homan said about the 2024 data. "So even though Secretary Mayorkas has said they're going to concentrate on public safety threats, the arrest and removal of criminal aliens is down 74%."

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