ICE as an agency has broad authority to decide whether to deport someone or not. Although DHS and ICE create policies on enforcement prioritization (what groups of people it will and will not move to detain and deport), it retains prosecutorial discretion (the authority of an agency or officer to decide what charges to bring and how to pursue each case1), and because of this authority, it can choose whether or not to deport people on a case-by-case basis.

So even though President Biden’s moratorium on deportation has been halted by a Texas court, his agency, ICE, can still decide not to deport people.

This is why must demand President Biden end all deportations, text ‘Undeniable’ to 877-877 or sign our petition.

¹ The Supreme Court has made it clear that “an agency’s decision not to prosecute or enforce, whether through civil or criminal process, is a decision generally committed to an agency’s absolute discretion.” Heckler v. Chaney 470 U.S. 821, 831 (1985).” https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/understanding-prosecutorial-discretion-immigration-law

As of the date we published this number (November 31, 2021), Biden’s administration had been in office for 314 days.

The number of deportations is a best estimate based on news reports, shared information among trusted immigrant-rights organizations, and an average of Title 42 expulsions at the border from CBP’s own reporting from January 20th to May 20th.¹

We chose to count Title 42 expulsions because this is an unfair policy that uses COVID-19 as an excuse to keep people out of the country and can be reversed immediately, though Biden has chosen not to. We will continue to add them as they are reported each month.

As we know, lack of transparency is a major problem for these agencies, ICE only puts out deportation numbers annually, but we knew and wanted to show the magnitude of the problem so we gave you a best approximation which we believe could be lower than the real number.

¹ https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics/title-8-and-title-42-statistics