We are fairly certain that you might have missed the following April 10 post from Pew Research Center, which summarized new Department of Justice data to make this conclusion:
Half (50%) of the 165,265 total arrests made by the federal government in fiscal 2014 – the most recent year for which statistics are available – were for immigration-related offenses, such as crossing the border illegally or smuggling others into the United States. A decade earlier, immigration-related offenses accounted for 28% of all federal arrests.
Pew also reported that the Department of Homeland Security has become the federal government’s top arresting agency:
DHS made 59% of all federal arrests, up from 37% in 2004 (the earliest year for which data are available following the department’s establishment in 2002). By comparison, DOJ made 35% of all federal arrests in 2014, down from 48% a decade earlier. In fact, just one agency within DHS – Customs and Border Protection – made more arrests in 2014 (64,954) than all of the agencies within DOJ combined (58,265). DOJ agencies include the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Marshals Service.
Pew also added this:
The growth in arrests by Customs and Border Protection coincides with a significant staffing increase within the agency, particularly during the mid-to-late 2000s. Between 2004 and 2010, the number of Border Patrol officers almost doubled, rising from 10,819 to 20,558.
We do feel that it is important to remind everyone that this emphasis on tougher enforcement for immigration offenses occurred mostly during the Democratic administration of Barack Obama, with a post 9/11 assist from George W. Bush and a 1996 bill from Bill Clinton. And like we have said before, immigration enforcement has clearly never been a partisan issue. You couldn’t have Donald Trump’s new immigration enforcement push without what has happened during the Obama years. It is an uncomfortable fact for Democrats to fully understand and the moment they do, the moment more Latinos will respect them.
