by Keith Koffler on March 31, 2014, 11:13 am
The Obama administration is deporting only about a quarter of the illegal immigrants it picks up, even though most come to their attention because of proven or alleged criminal behavior, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative group.
From the CIS report:
In 2013, (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) reported 722,000 encounters with potentially deportable aliens, most of whom came to their attention after incarceration for a local arrest. Yet ICE officials followed through with immigration charges for only 195,000 of these aliens, only about one-fourth . . .
Many of the aliens ignored by ICE were convicted criminals. In 2013, ICE agents released 68,000 aliens with criminal convictions, or 35 percent of all criminal aliens they reported encountering. The criminal alien releases typically occur without formal notice to local law enforcement agencies and victims.
What’s more, according to CIS, the administration may further relax the lenient “prosecutorial discretion” it uses to decide whether to send illegal immigrants back.
The report appears to raise the possibility that enforcement is being scaled back now that the onus of reelecting the president has been removed.
ICE targeted 28 percent fewer aliens for deportation from the interior in 2013 than in 2012, despite sustained high numbers of encounters in the Criminal Alien and Secure Communities programs.
The report also notes that the administration’s repeated claims to have deported record numbers of illegal immigrants is based on an Orwellian redefinition of “deported.” That is, it’s yet another lie.
An independent analysis of ICE records obtained in a lawsuit showed that ICE was able to achieve these “record” departures only because the agency was taking credit for removing a large number of individuals who were apprehended by the Border Patrol.
Such cases made up the majority of ICE’s reported deportations in 2013, but they had never been counted that way in previous administrations.
Although former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano denied that the ICE reports on her watch were misleading, her successor, Jeh Johnson, recently admitted to a House committee that the administration’s deportation figures are not comparable to previous administrations because of the large number of border removal cases.
Other findings from the report:
- ICE reports that there are more than 870,000 aliens on its docket who have been ordered removed, but who remain in defiance of the law.
- Under current policies, an alien’s family relationships, political considerations, attention from advocacy groups, and other factors not related to public safety can trump even serious criminal convictions and result in the termination of a deportation case.
- Less than 2 percent of ICE’s caseload was in detention at the end of fiscal year 2013.
Of course, everyone knows what’s going on here. Unless the Obama administration starts allowing non-citizens to send absentee ballots from Mexico, it does Democrats no good to deport all these future voters . . .
