Nearly a million illegal immigrants who have been ordered deported remain in the United States, according to a report released by a Washington think tank Friday — one year after the shooting death of Kate Steinle.

Steinle’s death at the hands of an illegal immigrant who had previously been deported five times galvanized the nation and became a symbol of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s indictment of America’s immigration policies.

“It just reveals an astounding breakdown in our immigration enforcement system.”

The Center for Immigration Studies, which produced Friday’s report, drew on information provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year by Immigration and Customs and Enforcement officials. As of July last year, there were 925,000 illegal immigrants placed on ICE’s “Post Final Order Docket” — meaning they had a final order to leave the country — who were still in the United States.

Some 61 percent of the immigrants under deportation orders came from just four countries — Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. About one in five of the total population of non-deported immigrants had had at least one prior criminal conviction, and the vast majority of both the criminals and non-criminals were at large, their whereabouts unknown.

“It just reveals an astounding breakdown in our immigration enforcement system,” said report author Jessica Vaughan, the think tank’s director of research. “ICE does not even attempt to detain all of the criminals.”

[lz_table title=”Ordered Deported, Still in U.S.*” source=”Center for Immigration Studies”]Status,Criminal,Non-criminal
Detained,6905,4467
Not Detained,172.1K,741.7K
Total,179K,746.1K
|
*As of July 2015
[/lz_table]

The total number of non-deported immigrants has been rising. The number of non-deported immigrants with criminal records jumped 18 percent percent from the middle of 2012 to the middle of 2015, according to the report. And Vaughan said the total number of immigrants under orders to deport who were still in the country was 931,107 by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 — an increase of 6,107 from July.

“It’s rising steadily,” she said.

There are three reasons why immigrants under orders to deport remain in the country:

  • Their home country refuses to accept them. The Department of Homeland Security lists 23 countries as “uncooperative” and another 62 whose cooperation is “strained.” Under a 2001 Supreme Court ruling, ICE may keep illegal immigrants in custody for only 180 days, with few exceptions.
  • The immigrants abscond. Illegal immigrants in custody, even those with criminal records, are often released pending a final determination of their legal status. Many of those people fail to appear for immigration hearings and flee after a court issues a final order. Once outside of an immigration detention center, statistics suggest illegal immigrants have little reason to fear getting caught. Vaughan said that in 2014, the last year for which statistics are available, ICE fugitive task forces arrested 6,904 people. “It’s a low number even of the criminals,” Vaughan said.
  • Federal authorities are hampered by “sanctuary” policies of cities and counties that order local law enforcement officials not to cooperate with immigration authorities.

That is how Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez came to be on a pier on July 1, 2015, when a bullet from his gun ricocheted off the pier deck and fatally wounded Steinle.

Who do you think would win the Presidency?

By completing the poll, you agree to receive emails from LifeZette, occasional offers from our partners and that you've read and agree to our privacy policy and legal statement.

After serving a federal prison sentence, Sanchez was scheduled to appear at his sixth deportation hearing. ICE officials, though, transferred him to San Francisco authorities after learning they had a warrant for his arrest base on a 20-year-old drug charge.

Prosecutors dismissed that charge, but rather than send him back federal immigration authorities, San Francisco authorities followed their sanctuary policy and released him. A few months later, he shot Steinle in the back. The incident was a factor in the sheriff’s defeat for re-election last year.

[lz_related_box id=”50751″]

Vaughan blamed policies of the Obama administration for the large and growing backlog of illegal immigrants who are ignoring orders to go home.

Prior to President Obama, the United States removed large numbers of immigrants essentially by cutting deals — leave the United States now or wait months or years in a detention facility until a court hearing that would almost certainly result in their deportation anyway. But the Obama administration has insisted that every illegal immigrant have a hearing, which has hopelessly clogged the system.

“ICE is choosing to give them immigration hearings,” Vaughan said. “On a practical level, it’s a way to gum up the immigration system … a way to slow-walk the immigration system.”

The result of those polices, Vaughan said, is that hundreds of thousands of people who should not still be in the United States — some of them dangerous — are roaming the streets.

“All of them are here illegally,” she said. “They don’t have any legal way to stay.”