Sanctuary Country: Biden Slashes Requests for Federal Custody of Criminal Illegal Aliens

President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has drastically slashed the number of requests it sends to local law enforcement agencies to turn over criminal illegal aliens in their custody for arrest and deportation from the United States, newly released data shows.

The data, collected and published by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, shows that since the start of the Biden administration in late January 2021, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has cut the number of detainers issued to local police.

These detainers ask police to hold illegal aliens arrested on local charges in their custody until they can be turned over to ICE agents for arrest and deportation. Sanctuary jurisdictions refuse to honor such detainers and free illegal aliens back into communities.

Now, data published by TRAC, finds Biden’s DHS has implemented a quasi-sanctuary country by massively reducing the number of ICE detainers issued to police.

For example, under the Trump administration, ICE was issuing more than 15,000 detainers a month in parts of 2018 and averaged about 13,000 to 14,000 detainers a month before Fiscal Year 2020, when the Chinese coronavirus pandemic hit.

Compare those monthly figures to when Biden took office and monthly detainers dropped to 2,200 by March of 2021 and increased to just about 3,800 in September 2021.

The newly released data backs up prior reports from ICE that showed dramatic declines in the agency issuing detainers for criminal illegal aliens.

The agency’s year-end report, for instance, noted that ICE agents issued fewer than 79,000 detainers for criminal illegal aliens in Fiscal Year 2022 — a 56 percent decline in the total number of detainers issued by ICE agents compared to Fiscal Year 2018.

In Fiscal Year 2021 and 2022, DHS requested custody for fewer than 145,000 illegal aliens arrested for crimes in the U.S.  In contrast, the Trump administration issued 20,000 more ICE detainers in a single year, Fiscal Year 2019, than Biden has throughout his first two years.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.