Where ICE Secure Communities Removals Now Occur

Fingerprints submitted to the FBI by law enforcement agencies from just two states—Texas and California—gave rise to almost half (47%) of all recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removals under its Secure Communities program. This is a much larger proportion than where ICE arrests are found. Just 39 percent of ICE arrests occurred in these two states[1].

Local, state, and federal agencies usually submit fingerprint records to the FBI when individuals are arrested and taken into custody, or after an individual is convicted and they begin serving their sentence. The latest case-by-case data, current through June 2018, reveal that Texas saw an average of nearly two thousand removals (1,975) each month from ICE's matching immigrant records with these fingerprints submitted to the FBI. California had just above one thousand (1,087) monthly removals through the Secure Communities program.

Nine out of ten counties in the United States with the most Secure Communities removals were also in Texas and California. These counties are shown in Figure 1. On top is the county of El Paso, Texas. Third and fifth spots are also Texas counties: Harris (the most populous county in Texas where Houston is located) and Howard (where Big Spring Correctional Center, a privately operated prison, is located). Dallas County and the border county of Hidalgo in Texas also made the top ten.


Figure 1. Top Ten Counties with Most ICE Secure Communities Removals,
FY 2018 (through June)
(Click for larger image)

Four California counties also occupied top spots. These four were: Orange County, California with the fourth highest monthly removals in the nation, followed by Los Angeles County (6th place), Imperial County along the southwest border (9th place), and Kern County in California's Central Valley. San Diego County came in eleventh place, and just missed being in the top ten.

Only one other state, Arizona, had a county that made the top ten. This was Maricopa County where Phoenix is located. It ranked in second place in the nation for the most Secure Communities removals.

ICE Secure Communities Removals Compared With Where ICE Arrests Occur

It would seem logical that communities where ICE arrests concentrate would also be those where the individuals who were deported come from. But, of course, not everyone arrested is found to be deportable, and not all ICE removals are through its Secure Communities program. Complicating comparisons, the location of law enforcement agencies submitting fingerprint records may differ from the location of the actual ICE arrests. Nonetheless, differences between these two sets of data are puzzling. Only ICE has the information that would help answer why these differences occur. Unfortunately, it has steadfastly refused to release information that would allow the public to match up ICE arrests with its removals.

What users now can easily do—based on TRAC's research—is compare ICE arrests in their locale with the relative number of ICE Secure Communities removals[2] reported by ICE for their state or county.

ICE
Arrests
Secure
Communities

Detailed data on ICE arrests are available, updated through May 2018, through TRAC's free user web query tool. This can then be compared to the comparable state and county monthly details on removals through a second app covering deportations under ICE's Secure Communities program, now updated through June 2018.

For example, comparing lists of state rankings on these two indicators turns up a number of surprising differences. See Table 1. Three states that made the top 10 on ICE interior arrests - Pennsylvania (7th on arrests), New Jersey (9th on arrests), and Oklahoma (10th on arrests) placed much lower in the rankings for Secure Communities removals. At the same time, South Carolina, Colorado, and Illinois place much higher on Secure Communities removals, than they do on ICE arrests.

Table 1. ICE Arrests and Secure Communities Removals, FY 2018
  ICE Arrests ICE Secure Communities Removals
Rank Order State FY 2018* Monthly Average State FY 2018* Monthly Average
All 106,914 13,364 All 58,623 6,514
1 Texas 27,657 3,457 Texas 17,777 1,975
2 California 14,214 1,777 California 9,783 1,087
3 Georgia 6,046 756 Arizona 3,807 423
4 Florida 5,278 660 Florida 2,923 325
5 Arizona 4,922 615 Georgia 2,666 296
6 New York 3,385 423 New York 1,561 173
7 Pennsylvania 2,995 374 North Carolina 1,440 160
8 North Carolina 2,563 320 South Carolina 1,018 113
9 New Jersey 2,390 299 Colorado 981 109
10 Oklahoma 2,352 294 Illinois 959 107
11 Virginia 2,163 270 Virginia 936 104
12 Tennessee 1,903 238 Tennessee 928 103
13 Nevada 1,879 235 Nevada 835 93
14 Louisiana 1,861 233 Washington 808 90
15 South Carolina 1,751 219 Massachusetts 798 89
16 Colorado 1,729 216 New Jersey 767 85
17 Illinois 1,729 216 Pennsylvania 742 82
18 Washington 1,502 188 Alabama 704 78
19 Ohio 1,284 161 Louisiana 633 70
20 Kentucky 1,263 158 Utah 626 70
21 Utah 1,263 158 Mississippi 604 67
22 Alabama 1,198 150 Minnesota 590 66
23 Maryland 1,149 144 Michigan 533 59
24 Minnesota 1,148 144 Indiana 531 59
25 Missouri 1,111 139 Oklahoma 516 57
26 Michigan 1,063 133 Ohio 485 54
27 Indiana 1,029 129 Kansas 456 51
28 Mississippi 895 112 Kentucky 408 45
29 Iowa 887 111 Maryland 397 44
30 Massachusetts 875 109 New Mexico 361 40
31 Nebraska 735 92 Arkansas 345 38
32 Arkansas 685 86 Missouri 328 36
33 Oregon 662 83 Iowa 318 35
34 District of Columbia 638 80 Idaho 281 31
35 Kansas 576 72 Oregon 261 29
36 Idaho 530 66 Wisconsin 252 28
37 Wisconsin 517 65 Connecticut 191 21
38 Connecticut 380 48 South Dakota 96 11
39 New Mexico 369 46 Rhode Island 86 10
40 Hawaii 286 36 District of Columbia 72 8
41 West Virginia 284 36 West Virginia 72 8
42 New Hampshire 274 34 Delaware 66 7
43 South Dakota 247 31 Wyoming 56 6
44 Wyoming 215 27 Hawaii 53 6
45 Delaware 211 26 North Dakota 49 5
46 Rhode Island 187 23 New Hampshire 47 5
47 Puerto Rico 111 14 Puerto Rico 42 5
48 North Dakota 105 13 Maine 19 2
49 Northern Mariana Isl 101 13 Montana 15 2
50 Maine 69 9 Alaska 9 1
51 Montana 54 7 Vermont 8 1
52 Guam 49 6 Virgin Islands 1 <.5
53 Vermont 46 6 Guam 0 -
54 Virgin Islands 34 4 Nebraska 0 -
55 Alaska 24 3 Northern Mariana Isl 0 -
Unknown 41 5 Unknown 383 43
* ICE arrests cover October 2017 - May 2018 while removals include October 2017 - June 2018.

Footnotes

[1] These so-called "interior arrests" exclude cases where ICE assumed custody of individuals who the Border Patrol had arrested.

[2] For removals that take place outside the Secure Communities program ICE continues to allege that it does not track where the arrest occurred. Thus, the only information that ICE has released covering all its removals is the port of entry that individuals were deported from. TRAC has compiled this information and made it available on its ICE removals app

TRAC is a nonpartisan, nonprofit data research center affiliated with the Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Whitman School of Management, both at Syracuse University. For more information, to subscribe, or to donate, contact trac@syr.edu or call 315-443-3563.