The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that the number of deported criminal illegal aliens increased in fiscal 2015. However, a look into the agency’s own data casts doubt on that claim.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported that 91 percent of all removals and returns in 2015 were criminal aliens and that “the number of convicted criminals removed from the interior continued to increase.”
In 2015, 235,413 people were deported from the interior. If 91 percent of those were criminals, that would come to 214,226 criminals deported. Absent from DHS’ current report were the 2014 figures.
In 2014, according to ICE’s website, 315,943 people were removed and 82 percent of those, or 259,073, were criminals.
The decrease of over 44,000 in criminal alien removals stems from new policy the president announced in November 2015 as part of his executive actions on immigration.
DHS gutted the Secure Communities program and replaced it with the Priority Enforcement Program, which targets the worst of criminals illegally residing in the U.S. The previous program had targeted a greater variety of criminals, thus qualifying more illegal immigrants for deportation.
“The administration’s mandate that ICE focus only on the ‘worst of the worst’ convicted criminal aliens means that too many of ‘the worst’ deportable criminal aliens are still at large in our communities,” director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, Jessica Vaughan, testified in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Dec. 2.
