Deportation Numbers Unwrapped
Raw Statistics Reveal the Real Story of ICE Enforcement in Decline
By Jessica Vaughan October 2013
Jessica M. Vaughan is the Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.
[Immigration and Customs Enforcement]
A key talking point for proponents of amnesty for illegal aliens is that the Obama administration has made historic improvements to border security and immigration enforcement, leading to “record” numbers of deportations that surpass the performance of earlier administrations. In December 2012, John Morton, then-director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), announced that his agency had removed nearly 410,000 illegal aliens that year. Major news outlets, pro-amnesty lawmakers, and other Obama administration allies heralded this apparent milestone as evidence that the border and illegal immigration were now under control.
On the same day, to far less fanfare, Morton also announced the implementation of new restrictions on how the agents and officers working under him could use their authority to enforce immigration laws. They were told to curtail the use of detainers, or immigration holds, which give ICE officers the opportunity to question and take custody of illegal aliens identified after arrest by a local law enforcement agency. This directive built on an earlier memo, issued in June 2011, which ordered ICE agents not to arrest certain broad categories of illegal aliens, including minor criminals, long-time residents, students, parents, caregivers, and a long list of other excepted categories for whom there was otherwise no statutory basis for special treatment. These and other directives have been euphemistically characterized as “prosecutorial discretion.”
This report examines data from a collection of mostly unpublished internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE statistics, to provide an alternative evaluation of the administration’s record on immigration enforcement that is based on raw statistics rather than pre-packaged press kits. These statistics show that, contrary to what is commonly believed, in fact immigration enforcement in the interior has slowed significantly in the last few years. ICE is arresting and removing noticeably fewer illegal aliens from the interior now than was the case five years ago, and even two years ago. Its focus has shifted away from interior enforcement in favor of processing aliens who are apprehended by the Border Patrol.
While the agency claims that it has stewarded resources effectively by guiding agents to hone in on criminals, in fact the number of criminal aliens removed from the interior also has declined, even as ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division (ERO) is notified of more arrested criminal aliens than ever before, through the Secure Communities program. These statistics stand in stark contrast to claims of “record deportations,” which largely have been taken at face value by the news media and many lawmakers.
The report also presents previously unpublished statistics disclosing the startlingly large number of cases on ICE’s post-final-order docket of aliens who have been ordered removed, but who remain living here in defiance of immigration enforcement. These “non-departed” illegal aliens are emblematic of the dysfunction in our immigration system, and must become a priority for enforcement before public trust in our system can be restored.
Key Findings:
The number of deportations resulting from interior enforcement by ICE declined by 19 percent from 2011 to 2012, and is on track to decline another 22 percent in 2013.
In 2012, the year the Obama administration claimed to break enforcement records, more than one-half of removals attributed to ICE were the result of Border Patrol arrests that would never have been counted as a removal in prior years. In 2008, under the Bush administration, only one-third of removals were from Border Patrol arrests.
Total deportations in 2011, the latest year for which complete numbers are available, numbered 715,495 – the lowest level since 1973. The highest number of deportations on record was in 2000, under the Clinton administration, when 1,864,343 aliens were deported.
When claiming record levels of enforcement, the Obama administration appears to count only removals, which are just one form of deportation, and only a partial measure of enforcement. Beginning in 2011, a shift of some of the routine Border Patrol case load to ICE enabled the administration to count an artificially high number of removals.
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the division of ICE that is responsible for work site enforcement, combating transnational gangs, overstay enforcement, anti-smuggling and trafficking activity, and busting document and identity theft rings, now contributes very little to immigration enforcement. In 2013 HSI has produced only four percent of ICE deportations, making just a few thousand arrests per year throughout the entire country.
ICE is doing less enforcement with more resources. Despite reporting more encounters in 2013 than 2012, ICE agents pursued deportation of 20 percent fewer aliens this year than last.
Enforcement activity declined in every ICE field office from 2011 to 2013, with the biggest declines in the Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Washington DC/Virginia, and Houston field offices.
Criminal alien arrests declined by 11 percent from 2012 to 2013, despite the completion of the Secure Communities program, which generates more referrals of arrested aliens than ever before. ICE agents took a pass on hundreds of thousands of aliens who were arrested by local authorities in those years.
ICE is carrying a case load of 1.8 million aliens who are either in removal proceedings or have already been ordered removed. Less than two percent are in detention, which is the only proven way to ensure departure.
As of the end of July 2013 there were 872,000 aliens – nearly half of ICE’s total docket – who had been ordered removed but who had not left the country.
The State Department continues to issue tens of thousands of visas annually to citizens of countries that refuse to take back their countrymen who are ordered removed from the United States. Many of these are violent criminals.
The statistics in the tables and charts in this report are taken from internal DHS documents obtained by the Center, including:
a series of reports prepared by the ICE/ERO Statistical Tracking Unit as part of the discovery process for Crane v. Napolitano, the lawsuit brought by ICE agents to challenge the Obama administration’s “prosecutorial discretion” and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policies;
two editions of the Weekly Departures and Detention Report covering the same 10-month period of fiscal years 2011-2013 (October 1 to the end of July), prepared by the Statistical Tracking Unit of the ICE Enforcement and Removals Operations division; and
the Yearbook of Immigration Statistics published by DHS.
Total Deportations: Lowest Number Since 1973
Figure 1 shows the total number of expulsions from the United States from 1982 to 2011. This action is commonly known as a “deportation.” In technical immigration law jargon, a deportation is actually just one form of expulsion that is a subset of removals, but for the purposes of this paper, the term deportation refers to all forms of expulsion.1 They are grouped into two broad categories: removals and returns.
These enforcement actions were carried out by agents of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and ICE. They include aliens who were caught in the act of entering the country illegally and those who were arrested in the interior. These individuals were apprehended by or referred to agents of Border Patrol, ICE or other DHS component agencies, including: ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO); ICE, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI); CBP Office of Field Operation (CBP-OFO) agents at the ports of entry; officers of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which adjudicates applications for green cards, work permits, and citizenship; or local law enforcement officers working in partnership with ICE and Border Patrol.
Deportation totals have fluctuated over the last 30 years, peaking in 1986, 2000, and 2004. The all-time record year was 2000, the last year of the Clinton administration. In 2011, the most recent year for which all ICE and CBP totals have been reported, deportations numbered 715,495. This was the lowest year since 1973, when 585,351 deportations were effected.
Figure 1 also shows that the proportion of removals relative to returns has increased significantly since 1997. A removal is a harsher consequence than return, because it bars the deportee from re-entry for a certain number of years and carries the potential for prison time if the deportee re-enters illegally. Aliens who are granted return are not automatically barred from coming back.
Both forms of deportation are used by both the Border Patrol and ICE. As is shown in Table 3 below, about half of the removal cases attributed to ICE are aliens who were apprehended by the Border Patrol and then turned over to ICE for processing. In addition, the Border Patrol and CBP officers handle some removal cases independently of ICE. As for returns, according to the Border Patrol statistics in Table 1, about 40 percent of returns in 2011 were cases that originated as Border Patrol apprehensions, with the other 60 percent completed by ICE and CBP.
[Figure 1]
To support the claim of “record” deportations in 2012, the Obama administration and its supporters cite the 409,000 deportations attributed to ICE that year. This is the highest number of removals credited to ICE in a single year; however, the number is higher because it includes the largest number of Border Patrol cases that ever have been transferred to ICE for processing in a single year (see Table 3). It does not reflect an increase in enforcement activity. In past years, these cases would have been handled by the Border Patrol, and counted in total deportations, but not as removals. Removals are at best half the number of total deportations, and do not represent the entire scope of enforcement actions taken by DHS enforcement agencies.
The President himself confirmed this statistical manipulation in 2011, speaking at a roundtable for Hispanic reporters:
“The statistics are actually a little deceptive because what we’ve been doing is, with the stronger border enforcement, we’ve been apprehending folks at the borders and sending them back. That is counted as a deportation, even though they may have only been held for a day or 48 hours, sent back — that’s counted as a deportation.” he said.2
Border Patrol Metrics: More Consequences for Fewer Cases
MORE READING
http://cis.org/ICE-Illegal-Immigrant-Deportations
