Paul Bedard, Washington Examiner, April 28, 2016

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in 2015 decided not to deport but release 19,723 criminal illegal immigrants, including 208 convicted of murder, over 900 convicted of sex crimes and 12,307 of drunk driving, according to new government numbers.

Overall, those released into virtually every state and territory of America had a total of 64,197 convictions among them, for an average of 3.25 convictions each, according to an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies. ICE also said that the group were convicted of 8,234 violent crimes.

Meanwhile, ICE said that it has also slashed the number of criminals arrested in local communities, according to the Center’s Director of Policy Studies, Jessica M. Vaughan. “In 2015, ICE made 119,772 arrests, or just half the number of arrests made in 2013, 232,287,” she said in her analysis that also included a map of the releases.

The reason: Under President Obama’s immigration policy changes, many criminal immigrants are being ignored even though local police and sheriff have urged ICE to take control of criminals in their jails and deport them.

She said that the slash of arrests is why the number of releases by ICE is down. In 2014, 30,000 criminal illegals were released.

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ICE for the first time explained why the illegals were released, with more than half ordered free by courts and in over 2,100 cases because their home countries didn’t want them back.