WASHINGTON
— The Obama administration is on pace to deport the fewest number of
immigrants in nearly a decade, according to internal government data
obtained by The Associated Press.
As
of April 20, federal immigration officials sent home 127,378 people in
the United States illegally. That puts immigrant removals on track to be
among the lowest since the middle of President George W. Bush's second
term.
The
internal statistics reveal a continuing decline in deportations even as
the Obama administration fights a legal challenge to a plan it
announced late last year to shield millions of immigrants from
deportations.
"With
the resources we have ... I'm interested in focusing on criminals and
recent illegal arrivals at the border," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh
Johnson told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee during an
oversight hearing Tuesday.
The
new figures, contained in weekly internal reports not publicly
reported, average about 19,730 removals a month for the first six months
of the government's fiscal year that began in October.
If
that trend continues, the government will remove about 236,000 by
September — the lowest figure since 2006, when 207,776 were sent home.
Removals
have been declining for nearly three years after Immigration and
Customs Enforcement recorded a record 409,849 removals in 2012. That
federal agency, known as ICE, is responsible for finding and removing
immigrants living in the country illegally.
President
Barack Obama announced a plan in November that would protect millions
of immigrants living in the country illegally, but that effort is on
hold after a federal judge in Texas blocked its implementation.
Meanwhile,
the Homeland Security Department has continued to slow removals, and a
program launched in 2012 to protect young immigrants from deportation
remains in place.
Johnson
has directed immigration authorities anew to focus on finding and
deporting immigrants who pose a national security or public safety
threat, those who have serious criminal records and those who have
recently crossed the Mexican border. Roughly 11 million immigrants are
thought to be living in the country illegally.
Johnson
confirmed Tuesday that removals have decreased but did not provide the
committee with specific numbers. He said a variety of factors, including
a corresponding drop in arrests of immigrants caught crossing the
border, have led to the drop.
Last
week, Johnson said the Border Patrol had arrested about 151,800 people
trying to cross the Mexican border illegally, the fewest number of
people caught at the border during the same period over the last four
years.
"There's
lower intake, lower apprehensions," Johnson said Tuesday. "There are
fewer people attempting to cross the southern border, and there are
fewer people apprehended."
Since
Obama first took office in 2009, the number of immigrants arrested and
deported from the interior of the country has steadily declined. That
year, nearly two thirds of the 389,834 immigrants removed were found in
the interior of the country. By 2014, roughly a third of the 315,943
people removed were living in the country, according to internal ICE
figures.
As
deportations have slowed in recent years, Homeland Security officials
have repeatedly attributed the drop to the changing demographic of
border crossers. A 2014 analysis of government data by the AP found that
the Obama administration had quietly slowed removals by about 20
percent.
The
change in deportations has included increased numbers of immigrants
from countries other than Mexico, including a flood of tens of thousands
of children and families, mostly from Honduras, El Salvador and
Guatemala. ICE shifted a variety of resources to the border, including
deploying agents to quickly opened family detention centers.
Sen.
Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary
Committee, called Johnson's explanation of moving resources to the
border "a red herring."
"It's clear to me that the department no longer seems to have a will to enforce immigration laws," Grassley said.
The
number of children caught traveling alone has dropped by about 45
percent compared to the same time last year, while the arrests of
families have declined about 30 percent.
Johnson said again Tuesday that those changes make it more difficult for ICE officials to quickly remove people.
"They
are increasingly from noncontiguous countries, and the process of a
removal of someone from a noncontiguous country is more time-consuming,"
Johnson said. "You see greater claims for humanitarian relief, for
asylum, and so it's not as simple as just sending somebody back across
the border."
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