ICE personnel are alarmed and discouraged by President Biden's executive order that all but shuts down immigration enforcement within the country. The public should be, too. According to several sets of ICE records I have analyzed, confirmed by conversations with ICE officials in the field, this order will prevent the arrest and removal of nearly all of ICE's caseload of criminals — including many aliens who have been convicted of the most serious crimes on the books. And the parts of the country that will be most affected will be those areas that have cooperated with ICE to ensure that criminal aliens are removed — such as Georgia and Texas.

The relevant part of the guidance reads as follows: Individuals incarcerated within federal, state, and local prisons and jails released on or after the issuance of this memorandum who have been convicted of an "aggravated felony," as that term is defined in section 101(a) (43) of the Immigration and Nationality Act at the time of conviction, and are determined to pose a threat to public safety. [Emphasis added.] This means ICE can arrest only those criminal aliens who are actually in the custody of authorities — in other words, inmates. If they are released due to sanctuary policies, the ICE officer must submit the request to arrest the released criminal alien all the way up the chain of command to be approved by Johnson, the acting ICE director. If the past is any guide, he should be getting at least a dozen of these to review every day, and I hope some reporter or member of Congress will ask for information on the ones that he refuses to sign off on. I hope we don't have to find out when someone gets killed by one Johnson didn't sign off on.

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