Alexander Fishkov, Ph.D. student Computer Science
Each year the Department of Homeland Security has to perform immigration enforcement actions against hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals (aliens) who are entering or already present in the United States. In this post we will explore the data about these actions provided by the Department of Homeland Security.
A foreign national who enters the United States without inspection between the designated ports of entry can be, depending on the situation, removed, permitted to return to their country or detained to appear before an immigration court. A similar situation arises when the person is already present in the United States, but is deportable or inadmissible. In this way, the total number of apprehensions of this kind of persons performed by DHS can serve as an indicator of prevented illegal migration.
The decline in the number of enforcement actions by DHS that started around a decade ago has slowed down and in the past years, while the number of apprehensions didn’t change much. Let’s look at these numbers on a finer scale.
Within the department, three operational units are responsible for the enforcement of immigration law:
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is responsible for immigration enforcement at and between the ports of entry
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is responsible for interior enforcement, including detention and removal operations
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is responsible for the administration of immigration and naturalization functions
As we see, only the first two units usually perform the apprehension actions. The U.S. Border Patrol (of CBP) monitors the flow of air passengers, sea passengers and land travelers and conducts immigration inspections to prevent entry of inadmissible persons.
For the fiscal year of 2013 we see that even though the totals are very close, the number of apprehensions by CBP has gone up by 13.5 percent since 2011, while the number performed by ICE Enforcement and Removal operations decreased. This is a good sign, since early apprehensions at the border help to prevent unwanted actions by the individuals in U.S. territory.
If we look at the nationalities of the apprehended individuals, the majority come from Central America and Mexico. All other countries of the world account for only 4.5 percent.
The number of Mexican nationals apprehended has decreased in the past years, while the number of Guatemalan, Honduran and El Salvadoran citizens grows. Another interesting trend is a decrease in the number of Cuban nationals apprehended: it dropped from 6600 in 2008 to 2800 in 2013.
About Alexander Fishkov
Alexander Fishkov, Ph.D. student Computer Science
Alexander is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science. He currently holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Applied Math. He has experience working for industry major companies performing research in the fields of machine learning, data mining and natural language processing. In his free time, Alexander enjoys hiking, Nordic skiing and traveling.
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