ICE removals up 145% in Colorado and Wyoming in 2017 fiscal year, arrests up 20%

DENVER – Colorado and Wyoming saw a major uptick in the number of people arrested and deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the first year of the Trump administration, according to new numbers released by the agency Tuesday.

ICE said that in Colorado and Wyoming, 2,746 people were arrested and 2,535 were removed from the U.S. in the 2017 fiscal year, which ran from Oct. 1 of last year through Sept. 30 of this year.

The 2017 numbers show an increase of 145 percent in the number of removals from the area when compared to the 2016 fiscal year, when 1,033 people were removed. Arrests were up 20 percent over the same period, from 2,284 in 2016.

During the 2015 fiscal year, ICE arrested 2,351 people in Colorado and Wyoming and removed 1,156 people.

The removal trend in Colorado and Wyoming goes in the opposite direction of the national trend. ICE says that the total number of removals nationwide was down 6 percent this year compared to last year, which the agency attributed “to the decline in border apprehensions.”

But ICE also took into account in a press release announcing the numbers that there was a 40 percent jump in removals since President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20 when compared to the previous fiscal year. And removals resulting from an agency arrest went up 37 percent since Jan. 20, ICE said.

ICE says 92 percent of arrestees since Jan. 20 “were removable aliens who had a criminal conviction or a pending criminal charge, were an ICE fugitive, or were an illegal re-entrant.”