Did ICE targeting change in 1st days of Trump administration?
Immigration Enforcement: Know Your Rights
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SYRACUSE, New York - Headlines about ICE raids in Chicago and other parts of the country instilled fear in the hearts of many immigrants – and joy for many conservatives opposed to illegal immigration – in the first month of President Donald Trump's second term.
So the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which has been delving into immigration data for years, set out to answer the question: Did ICE targeting change in the first days of the Trump administration?
The answer?
Yes and no.
What we know:
In places like Cook County, Chicago, immigration actions were down 10%, but in places like San Diego County, immigration actions were up by 21%, the data shows.
TRAC researchers focused on "new notices to appear" issued by the Department of Homeland Security dated after Jan. 20 - the day Trump was sworn into office – to Jan. 31, and compared those notices to what was issued from Jan. 1 to 19, the remaining days of President Joe Biden's term.
In order to remove a noncitizen from the United States, DHS officials need a removal order from an immigration judge, which is called a notice to appear.
By the numbers:
During Biden's last two weeks, DHS issued an average of 2,600 notices to appear each weekday.
Once Trump took office, that number dropped to an average of about 1,280 notices a day, but researchers noted that it's possible these numbers dropped because Trump canceled all appointments on an app called CBP One, that asylum seekers might have tried to use at ports of entry.
To understand better what has been occurring in this short time frame, TRAC researchers bore down county by county, comparing the number of "notices to appear" issued in January only between Biden and Trump.
What they found: Not only was Cook County in Chicago down 10%, but Miami Dade County in Florida was down 6%, Dallas County and Tarrant County, both in Texas, were down 16%.
But they also found that notices to appear in Cameron County in Texas were up 30%, Pinal County in Arizona were up 34% and San Diego County were up 21%.
Only counties where at least 500 immigrants received notices to appear were charted, and notably, there were no such actions in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York or Detroit – all cities with large immigration populations.
In fact, LA and Queens, New York had exactly zero notices to appear orders sent out, TRAC noted.
Researchers also noted there was a substantial drop in enforcement actions against Venezuelans and Cubans in the last two weeks of January, and those from India, China and Nicaragua received more of these court notices under Trump.