Caribbean Immigrant Arrests Saw Minimal Spike In 2018

News Americas, WASHINGTON, Weds. July 3, 2019: As Caribbean immigrants mark another July 4th weekend, new data from the American Immigration Council, (AIC) is shedding light on the actual arrest data of nationals from four Caribbean nations under the Trump administration in 2018.

Data for countries like Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica showed a slight spike and even a decline in arrests for the period Jan. 20, 2017 -Sep. 23, 2018 of the Trump administration compared to the Jan. 1, 2016 -Sep. 23, 2018 period of the Obama administration.

Cuba saw a mere 0.44 percent arrest increase of nationals during this administration compared to the last while the Dominican Republic and Jamaica saw a decrease.

The DR saw a drop by -0.31 percent while Jamaica saw a decline in arrests by -0.13 percent.

However, when it came to removals, Haiti of all Caribbean nations actually saw a slight increase in deportations under the Trump administration compared to the Obama administration, with the AIC putting the increase to about 0.22 percent.

Overall, the AIC found that after President Trump took office in January 2017, the number of arrests conducted by ICE each month was consistently higher than the total number of arrests during the corresponding months in 2016. Starting in February 2017, the monthly number of arrests was never lower than 11,000.

While the monthly average of arrests conducted during the last year of the Obama administration was 9,195, the monthly average during the first year of the Trump administration was 13,156. In 2018, the number of monthly arrests seemed to have stabilized and remained fairly consistent between 12,573 and 14,276.

And during both the last part of the Obama administration and the first part of the Trump administration, Mexicans and nationals from the Northern Triangle of Central America represented roughly 85 percent of all arrests.