Two-Thirds Of Deportees Under Obama Administration Not Serious Criminals, Says New York Times Analysis

The New York Times reported on Sunday that an analysis of government records by the paper found that of the almost 2 million deportations which have occurred since President Barack Obama entered office, two-thirds were of people who committed no more than “minor infractions, including traffic violations” or no crime at all. Only twenty percent of deportees had been convicted of serious crimes, including drug offenses. The report – which comes as deportations are expected to breach the 2 million mark in coming days, if the current rate remains steady – belies the president’s portrayal of enforcement efforts as being limited to hardened criminals and “not families, not folks who are just looking to scrape together an income."

The paper also notes that deportations of people whose records were limited to traffic violations, like driving under the influence, quadrupled under Obama: from 43,000 in the last five years of George W. Bush’s presidency to 193,000 over the five years of Obama’s time in office. Similarly, deportations related to illegal entry or illegal re-entry tripled under Obama, to over 188,000.

The impetus set forth by the Times is clear: like Bush, Obama and recently departed Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano both believe that getting conservatives to negotiate a comprehensive immigration reform depends on appearing hawkish on enforcement. Early on in his presidency, immigration officials set 400,000 yearly deportations as a goal. They ended Bush-era raids on workplaces and shifted agents from the heartland to the border, where a greater percentage of people have been removed. But that enforcement-heavy posture may have backfired politically by whittling into support for the president among Latinos, Asians and other minority groups who make up part of his base. Meanwhile, bipartisan immigration reform looks like a lost cause, at least in 2014.

The legal and fiscal framework for these mass deportations – and for the huge uptick in the tally -- have been in place for years. As the Migration Policy Institute notes, much of the responsibility for it goes to the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). That law established two separate deportation procedures, bypassing hearings and judges completely, for certain noncitizens: expedited removal, by which Customs and Border Protection decides they’re “inadmissible”, and reinstatement of removal for those who had been deported in the past, regardless of family ties in the US.