Deportations Of Noncriminals Rise As ICE Casts Wider Net

WASHINGTON — The number of immigrants deported from the interior of the U.S. who had no criminal convictions nearly tripled during President Donald Trump’s first fiscal year as president, as he carried out his promise to ramp up enforcement on the undocumented population.

The Trump administration insisted on Tuesday that agents are still focused on criminals, even though the president eliminated policies from the previous administration that instructed agents to prioritize some immigrants over others. A majority of immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the 2017 fiscal year had been convicted of crimes.

But ICE’s end-of-year statistics, released Tuesday, show that people with clean criminal records are far from safe ― including so-called “Dreamers” who came to the U.S. as children, should they lose deportation protections from the now-rescinded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Thomas Homan, the acting director of ICE, said all immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization “should be concerned.”. . .