ICE has completed its mid-year assessment of foreign countries that cooperate with ICE in accepting back their foreign nationals that have been ordered deported from the United States. Countries that refuse to accept, or that delay the acceptance of, their nationals are considered to be uncooperative or recalcitrant.
Hong Kong is the only country that has been added to list of uncooperative countries but ICE has successfully worked with nine other countries, including Iraq and Somalia, to remove them from the list. The number of recalcitrant countries has dropped from 20 to 12 since the presidential election. This makes it the shortest list in nearly a decade.
According to the report, the number of countries who are “At-Risk of Non-Compliance” has also decreased from 55 to 47 countries.
The decline is a result of Pres. Trump’s Jan. 25 Enhancing Interior Enforcement executive order that ordered visas suspended from countries that refused to take back their citizens. This executive order addresses #7 in NumbersUSA’s 10 Steps to Fix our Broken Immigration Enforcement System.
“On matters like this, the Trump administration is speaking not so softly and waving the sharp stick of visa sanctions,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies.
When a country refuses to accept their criminal aliens back they are often released back into American communities because the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government can only hold illegal aliens for a certain amount of time.
Marlen Pineiro, assistant director for removal operations at ICE, said that ICE has moved to a more formal process for identifying recalcitrant countries.
In the past the list was based on the sense of state of the country. Now ICE conducts a review of each country looking at certain metrics including how long it takes to issue travel documents, whether the country will conduct identity interviews to facilitate deportation, and whether the country has a favorable deportation-to-release ratio.
Here is the full list:
Uncooperative Countries:
Burma
Cambodia
China
Cuba
Eritrea
Guinea
Hong Kong
Iran
Laos
Morocco
South Sudan
Vietnam
Countries At Risk of Non-Compliance:
Afghanistan
Algeria
Azerbaijan
Bangladesh
Benin
Bermuda
Botswana
Brazil
British Virgin Islands
Burkina Faso
Burundi
DR Congo
Dominica
Egypt
Ethiopia
Gambia
Ghana
Iraq
Ivory Coast
Kenya
Lebanon
Libya
Mali
Mauritania
Mauritius
Montserrat
Mozambique
Nepal
Niger
Nigeria
Pakistan
Rwanda
Samoa
Senegal
Serbia
Sierra Leone
St. Lucia
Sudan
Swaziland
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Tunisia
Uganda
Venezuela
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Read more on this story at The Washington Times.
