The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) issued a report saying 95 percent of the illegal aliens deported between 2009 and 2013 were criminal and repeat immigration offenders. Illegal-alien advocates have made news decrying the Obama Administration’s deportation of non-criminals, but the MPI report confirms DHS followed internal policies that prioritize deportations based on criminal records and ignore the illegal presence of other foreign nationals. Only about 77,000 of the 1.6 million illegal aliens deported over the period did not have a history of criminal activity or prior deportations.
The MPI report says "the Obama administration has shifted from a more generalized model of enforcement to a model focused almost exclusively on illegal border crossers, obstructionists and criminals." The study said the shift attracted new illegal aliens because the risk of others being deported is nil. In fiscal year 2014, for example, ICE agents came into contact with 585,000 potentially deportable immigrants in the nation’s interior, but released 442,000 of them.
According to a Center for Immigration Studies study released this week, the Obama Administration’s overall deportation numbers are down as well. The total number of deportation dropped about 25 percent from the previous fiscal year. And despite the focus on criminals, almost 167,000 convicted criminal alien with final orders of removal are still at large in the United States.
Illegal alien advocates have accused President Obama of ignoring his restrictive deportation policies, saying that illegal aliens with “clean records” are getting caught up in the deportation mix. At their urging, the president earlier this year promised an executive amnesty that makes deportation procedures “more humane.” That executive amnesty was due in the early fall but the president delayed it until after the election.
The MPI study said that the Administration will not be able to substantially reduce the number of deportations through strict adherence to its current enforcement priorities. That’s because 59 percent of deportations since 2009 fell into more than one enforcement priority category. To produce the reductions sought by illegal-alien advocates, the Administration would need to create new “multidimensional exemptions” in the criminal, repeat offender and absconder categories.
Read more in The Washington Times.
