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  • 2016-10-19 (xsd:date)
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  • Were More People Deported Under the Obama Administration Than Any Other? (en)
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  • During the third and final presidential debate on 19 October 2016, Republican nominee Donald Trump remarked that President Barack Obama has moved millions of people out ... millions of people have been moved out of this country. As of 2015, more than 2.5 million undocumented persons had been deported by immigration authorities since President Obama took office in 2009, a total which was statistically record-setting. During the two terms of Obama's predecessor, President George W. Bush, just over 2 million people were deported. However, that statistic is somewhat misleading, as a significant portion of it was due to a change in the way deportations are defined that began during the Bush administration, not in the actual number of persons turned out of the U.S. As the Los Angeles Times noted, if not for that change in definition about what constitutes a deportation, the Obama administration likely would not have been a record-setting one in this area: The deportation trend abated towards the latter part of the Obama administration, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announcing efforts to prioritize convicted criminals and threats to public safety, border security, and national security. Although 2013 was a record-setting year with 435,498 deportations, 2015 saw the lowest numbers in a decade, according to ICE. Data provided by ICE dating back to 1892 records that annual deportations jumped into the hundred-thousands in 1997, when the U.S. deported 114,432 people. Just one year earlier, the U.S. had deported only 69,680 people. According to the non-profit immigrant advocacy group American Immigration Council, the trend in growing deportation numbers long preceded Barack Obama's presidency: The trend can be traced back to the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IIRCA) of 1986, which encouraged the initiation of deportation proceedings against any immigrant convicted of a deportable offense. Since that time, a stream of punitive legislation has eaten away at the traditional discretion of judges to grant relief from deportation in particular cases. According to the Pew Research Center, other variables have played into the climbing rate of deportations during Barack Obama's presidency, including higher rates of apprehension by Border Patrol agents: The Border Patrol's budget has expanded from $5.9 billion 2003 to $11.9 billion in 2013, while ICE's grew from $3.3 billion to $5.9 billion. As of 2013, the two agencies had a total budget of nearly $18 billion, and that number increased to nearly $20 billion in 2016. Another factor for the increase in deportations during Obama's terms comes from legislation that has become known as a bed mandate or bed quota: The Washington Post described how ICE has maintained that average of 34,000 individuals in detention and how the practice has affected the number of deportations: The American Immigration Council explained how recent trends toward combining the duties of local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities also contributed, with programs such as the now-discontinued Secure Communities and 287(g): Secure Communities was replaced by the Priority Enforcement Program, which prioritizes threats to national security, public safety, and border security. In the 105 years between 1892 and 1997, the U.S. deported 2.1 million people — meaning that under presidents Bush and Obama, the number of people deported by the U.S. in the course of a century was more than doubled in just 16 years of consecutive presidencies. (en)
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