ICE Offers Update on Operation Broken Promise, Despite a Dim Outlook for Agency

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced Monday the latest results of a national enforcement effort called “Operation Broken Promise,” targeting aliens who promised to voluntarily leave the country – but never did, for arrest and removal.

From Dec. 7-17, ICE Enforcement and Removal (ERO) officers apprehended more than 150 individuals, including 117 who failed to depart after being granted the privilege of voluntary departure. Approximately 7 out of every 10 aliens arrested had criminal convictions or pending charges.

ICE Senior Official Performing the Duties of Director, Tony H. Pham, stated on the issue.

Our officers are committed to preserving the integrity of our nation’s immigration laws and are strengthening the overall safety, security and well-being of our communities.

On Nov. 19, ICE announced the arrest of more than 150 individuals who failed to depart after being granted voluntary departure from Nov. 2 to Nov. 17.

Voluntary departure is typically requested by the alien and granted by an immigration judge, where the alien is granted 60-120 days to arrange their own departure depending on their current situation. In exchange, the alien in question does not have to face the formal deportation process and the barriers to readmission that it carries. Voluntary departures also benefit U.S. taxpayers by lowering the costs of removals.

When an alien fails to depart the country per the agreement, they become subject to a final removal order which is then carried out as a formal deportation by ICE. In addition to the barrier on readmission, illegal reentry after a formal deportation is a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Meanwhile, in passing the massive omnibus federal spending and Covid relief package late last night, Congress has defaulted on maintaining and supplying the resources needed for ICE to execute their oaths and keep Americans, already present immigrants, and our communities safe.

The bill reduced funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement by $431 million and cut 11,274 detention beds from 2020 levels. This news comes as more Central American caravans already form and open-border groups predict that even larger waves of wage-cutting aliens will rush to the border expecting to exploit Joe Biden’s pro-migration campaign promises.

This lack of resources will inevitably pressure the agency to restart the “catch-and-release” enforecemnet measures in 2021, once the number of aliens overwhelms the agency’s reduced budget for detention spaces, creating the perfect storm for at very least a repeat of the border surge in FY2019, although most likely much worse surge. Perhaps, now Americans finally have some context to the promise Biden made earlier this year during the Dem. Primary Debates when he stated, “And by the way, I would immediately as President, surge the border!”

Neil Munro, a reporter for Breitbart News sums up the issue with this style of uncontrolled mass immigration perfectly:

Migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.

Migration also allows investors and CEOs to skimp on labor-saving technology, sideline U.S. minorities, ignore disabled people, exploit stoop labor in the fields, short-change labor in the cities, impose tight control and pay cuts on American professionals, corral technological innovation by minimizing the employment of American grads, undermine labor rights, and even get many progressive journalists to cheerlead for Wall Street’s priorities.

Unsurprisingly, the $900,000,000,000 passed by Congress does not denote any spending to help deter economic migration into Americans’ jobs or to forcibly return aliens to their home countries once their appeals for asylum are denied after years of legal hearings.

Put plainly, this reduction in funding will make American communities less safe as ICE will be forced to roll back efforts to identify and remove dangerous criminal aliens, all while the Democrat elites in Washington wash their hands of the issue, superciliously gleeful in their humanitarian accomplishment.

“Democrats are bragging that they are cutting ICE funding,” said Rosemary Jenks, Director of Government Relations at NumbersUSA. “They are bragging about making our communities less safe,” she added.

For the ICE release discussing enforcement of voluntary removals, please click here.

For more on the impact of the recent funding bill on immigration enforcement, please visit Breitbart News.