INNOCENT

Trump’s Immigrant Roundups Netting More and More Noncriminals

Noncriminal ICE arrests increased 66 percent so far this year.

Donald Trump’s immigration policies have led to a dramatic increase in the number of arrests of noncriminals by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) so far this year, the Associated Press reports. ICE arrests of noncriminals are said to have increased 66 percent in the first nine months of the 2018 fiscal year over the same period last year—while arrests of convicts rose only by under 2 percent in the same period. Noncriminals are being deported in much higher numbers, too. In the 2017 fiscal year, there was a 174 percent increase from the previous year in deportations of people who were completely free of criminal convictions. “Unshackling ICE has really allowed it to go after more individuals,” Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, told the AP.