US officials say Trump has cast wider net for deportations

UPDATE: 12/5/2017 11:25 a.m. A top immigration official said people living in the country illegally have good reason to be worried about getting deported under President Donald Trump.

Thomas Homan, deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, spoke Tuesday in Washington as the federal government announced that Border Patrol arrests plunged to a 45-year-low in the last fiscal year while arrests by deportation officers soared.

Numbers released Tuesday show the Border Patrol made nearly 311,000 arrests during the fiscal year that ended September 30, a decline of 25 percent from a year earlier.

Since Trump took office, ICE arrests surged 40 percent from the same period a year earlier.

Homan says the Trump administration has cast a wider net when picking up people for deportation.

Administration officials say the decline in Border Patrol arrests to the lowest level since 1971 doesn’t undercut justification for Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico.