Criminals Find New Home in US

The number of illegal aliens convicted of crimes who were deported last year plunged by nearly 25 percent, as the Obama administration scaled back efforts to send illegals — even criminals — back to their home countries.

Deportations of illegals with criminal convictions declined from 177,960 to 136,700. These are the very deportations President Barack Obama has repeatedly promised to prioritize.

“The Obama administration has enforced our immigration laws as little as possible and made it clear that the ultimate goal is to proceed to no immigration laws to enforce,” said William Gheen, founder of the Americans for Legal Immigration political action committee.

Overall, the number of illegal immigrants deported during the past 12 months plummeted from 315,943 to 231,000, according to the Associated Press, which obtained yet-to-be-published statistics from the Department of Homeland Security. That figure, the lowest level since 2006, generally does not include people picked up at the border and quickly sent back.

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Obama promised that the government would focus on kicking out criminals.

When he announced in November that he intended to halt deportation efforts against millions of otherwise law-abiding illegal aliens, Obama promised the government would focus on kicking out criminals. He bragged that deportations of criminals had risen by 80 percent during the previous six years.

“And that’s why we’re going to keep focusing enforcement resources on actual threats to our security,” Obama said. “Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids. We’ll prioritize, just like law enforcement does every day.”

He added: “If you’re a criminal, you’ll be deported.”

Apparently not.

Obama’s more ambitious plans to issue green cards to illegals is on hold while the courts review the constitutionality of his actions. But while he retains discretion to prioritize criminals, the number actually sent home between Oct. 1, 2014, and Sept. 28 of this year is down.

The government during Obama’s first term actually exceeded the enforcement record of former President George W. Bush, removing more than 2.4 million illegals. But deportations have been dropping since he won re-election in 2012. Overall, deportations have declined by 42 percent since that year. And the decline has accelerated. The 84,000 decline from 2014 to 2015 was the steepest one-year drop since fiscal year 2012.

“They have a less than a 1 percent chance of ever being deported.”

“I think the big policy news flash across this country is that most immigrants around the world know that they have a less than a 1 percent chance of ever being deported,” Gheen said.

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, said Obama had little to do with the increase in deportations during his first term. She attributed the rise to the Safe Communities initiative begun in 2008 by Bush and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Backed up with increased resources from Congress, she said, ICE used an expansion of fingerprint records to target and deport criminals.

“Criminals always have been the highest priority for deportation,” she said. “It’s not like the Obama administration was the first to think of that.”

Jennifer Elzea, deputy press secretary for ICE, attributed the deportation drop to a substantial decrease in overall apprehensions. She also sought to shift blame to so-called “sanctuary cities” that do not assist federal immigration authorities.

“There are a number of local law enforcement agencies, including some of the largest in the country, that have limited or declined to cooperate with ICE,” she said in a statement. “ICE must expend more time and resources, including using more immigration officers, to locate and arrest individuals at-large.”