How the Obama Administration Inflates Deportation Statistics

For the last few years, the Obama Administration has claimed that it's deporting a record number of illegal aliens. But, the Administration is adding numbers to its overall deportation statistics that have not been historically included in the total number of annual deportations...

• Removal numbers have traditionally consisted of legal immigrants who have committed crimes, those who overstay visas, or illegal aliens caught inside the country.

  The immigration statistics yearbook states that removals are the compulsory and confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the United States based on an order of removal.

  An alien who is removed has administrative or criminal consequences placed on subsequent reentry owing to the fact of the removal.

• In the past, removal numbers did not include “returns,” who are Mexican nationals caught illegally crossing the border by the Border Patrol and returned.

  According to the yearbook, returns are the confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the United States not based on an order of removal.

  Most of the voluntary returns are of Mexican nationals who have been apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol and are returned to Mexico.

• The Obama administration has started counting certain “returns” as “removals” in order to artificially inflate the numbers and create a “record level” of deportations. Specifically, those caught by the Border Patrol who are shuttled to a different town along the border before they are returned are being dishonestly counted as deportations. This has falsely increased the number of total removals by more than 100,000 for the past two years.
   
• In fact, if we count removals and returns together historically, then the Obama administration numbers are not close to “record-setting.” In the 1990s, the totals of returns and removals were well over one million. For example, according to the yearbook of immigration statistics, in 1996, removals and returns numbered more than 1.6 million, up from more than 1.3 million in 1995.
   
• In an October 2011 roundtable with Hispanic reporters, President Obama himself said the deportation numbers were artificially high because they include those caught at the border...

The Washington Post Reveals the Fraud

• In December 2010, the Washington Post revealed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had included more than 19,000 illegal immigrants who had exited the country in the previous fiscal year in its deportation statistics for the current (2010) fiscal year...

  The memo also explained how ICE would inflate the number: increasing detention space to hold more illegal immigrants while they await deportation proceedings; sweeping prisons and jails to find more candidates for deportation and offering early release for those willing to go quickly; and a surge in efforts to catch illegal immigrants who lied on immigration or visa applications or reentered the U.S. after being deported...

• According to the Washington Post, internal emails showed that when ICE officials realized in the final weeks of the fiscal year, which ended September 30th, that ICE’s numbers would fall short of the previous year’s mark, they quietly directed immigration officers to bypass immigration courts whenever possible and encourage eligible foreign nationals to agree to voluntarily return to their countries without a negative mark on their immigration record.

  This allowed hundreds of immigrants [illegal aliens] who typically would have gone before an immigration judge to contest deportation offenses such as drunk driving, domestic violence and misdemeanor assault to leave the country without a statutory civil or criminal bar for applying for legal residence or traveling to the U.S. in the future....