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ICE officers said the rules prevented arrests of serious sex offenders, including one case involving indecency with a child by sexual contact and another involving sexual assault of a juvenile younger than 14.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has argued that ICE’s budget is too limited to enforce the law the way it was enforced in the Trump era.
He said the new priorities, which were deemed interim guidance, were an attempt to focus arrests and deportations on the most serious cases.
But ICE arrests have plummeted, according to data kept by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The number fell to about 3,000 a month from March through July, or about half what it was last year at the height of the pandemic and less than a third of what it was in 2019.
Early data also suggested fewer serious criminals were being arrested, despite the focus.
Texas and Louisiana sued to block the rules, saying they were being forced to release criminals who in previous times would have been picked up by ICE in accordance with the law.
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