President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security deported about 2,500 people who overstayed their visas in 2015, the lowest of any year of his administration, according to a Republican lawmaker who raised the issue with DHS on Tuesday.
DHS deported 12,500 people for overstaying their visas in 2009, according to Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, but that had number dropped by 10,000 by 2015. Smith estimated that 2,500 deportees represents one twentieth of the people who have overstayed their visas.
“That sounds to me like an extension of the administration’s amnesty program,” Smith said Tuesday during a House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing.
An official with DHS’s Homeland Security Investigations explained that the agency has a “prioritization scheme” to target the most dangerous overstays and suggested that Smith’s numbers were artificially low. “If we grab someone today, they’re not necessarily going to be removed any time soon because it could take awhile for them to go through the process,” Craig Healy, assistant director for national security investigations, told Smith.
He added that 95,000 people were “continuously monitored” last year in conjunction with the intelligence community, but that only prompted further criticism from the congressman.
“Had you chosen to do so, many thousands of those individuals could have been deported,” he said. “The message they are sending wide and far is just get into the country, if you’re not convicted of a serious country, you’re going to be allowed to stay, you’re going to pass go, you’re going to get the money. and that is the wrong message to send because it increases more illegal immigration. It sends a message that the administration is just trying to implement amnesty by another means.”
