The U.S. Government Accountability Office recently released a report detailing immigrant arrests and removals in the United States over the past four fiscal years. Priority for apprehensions falls under three levels. The highest focuses on threats to national security, border security and public safety while the others take into account misdemeanants, new immigration violators and other offences. In 2018, there were 112,870 enforcement and removal operation (ERO) arrests and that increased to 151,889 in 2017 before falling slightly to 151,497 in 2018. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removed people from nearly 200 countries every year between 2015 and 2018.
The report found that detentions of Mexican citizens were highest at 136,406 in 2018 while 139,330 removals were carried out. Guatemala has 120,745 detentions and 52,755 removals while for third-placed Honduras, detentions and removals stood at 78,630 and 32,180 respectively. India is an interesting country on the top-ten list and it has had increasing numbers of its citizens removed from the U.S. in recent years. In 2015, 296 Indian nationals were removed and that grew to 831 in 2018. The GAO found that males and convicted criminals accounted for the majority of ICE arrests and removals between 2015 and 2018.
