The acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is accusing the Biden administration of “cooking the books” on illegal immigrant arrest numbers.
“They were purposely misleading the American people by categorizing individuals processed and released into the interior of the United States as ICE arrests,” acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told reporters during a call on Wednesday. “A comprehensive review was done internally here with ICE, and we found tens of thousands of cases that were recorded as arrests, when, in fact, these instances were illegal aliens that were simply processed and released into the American communities.”
Lyons said the Biden administration “counted these arrests, even though no immigration enforcement action was taken.”
A DHS official explained further:
Many outlets have reported on the fact that during fiscal year 2024, ICE made 113,431 arrests — and that’s true, we did — but the vast majority of those were what we call “pass-through” arrests.
We call them pass-through arrests because we didn’t take enforcement actions against these aliens. They just passed through ICE before they were released in the U.S. interior and told to report to an ICE office. None of the arrests made by ICE since January 20th are pass-through arrests. What we are doing now is actual immigration enforcement, NOT enforcement theatre.
The American people should know the truth. It’s telling what reporters have actually reported on this vs. those who bury it.
The Biden Admin was cooking the books on illegal alien arrest numbers, lying to the American people. Here’s the nitty gritty: @DHSgov & @ICEgov discovered that the Biden administration was *purposefully* misleading the American public by categorizing individuals processed and…
— Tricia McLaughlin (@TriciaOhio) March 12, 2025
Fortunately, ICE has returned "to its core mission" of "arresting people who violate our immigration laws," Lyons noted.
HOLY SHLIT
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 13, 2025
The Biden administration “cooked the books“ and deceived the public with the number of arrests of illegal aliens.
ICE found tens of thousands of cases that were recorded as arrests, but were in fact not arrests— and those illegals were released into our country. pic.twitter.com/G0oWvAncJ9