Deportations increased in 2013 by more than 20,000 people from the year before, with 438,421 immigrants being returned to their homelands for a record number that brings the Obama administration's totals to more than two million since President Barack Obama took office.
According to official figures published on Wednesday, the numbers also mark an increase of more than 51,000 over 2011, when enforcement declined, records from the Office of Immigration Statistics of the
Department of Homeland Security show, reports
The New York Times.
The report reflects a trend of quickly expelling people caught coming across the nation's border instead of concentrating on immigrants already living within the country, with 44 percent of the people deported in 2013 being sent back shortly after they were caught and without having to appear in immigration court.
And with the nation's immigration courts are mired down with backlogs, another 40 percent of the deportations were done with a fast track procedure, by reinstating old orders that were not carried out before.
But just 17 percent of the deportations were ones that had to go through a court procedure, where in 2011, that figure was at 36 percent.
"You can't look at this report and conclude that this administration has not been serious about immigration enforcement," said Marc R. Rosenblum, director of the United States policy program at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. "This reinforces the message that he [Obama] has been the deporter-in-chief."
About 45 percent of the total deportations were of people with criminal records, reports Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that carries out most deportations from the interior of the country, with 198,394 foreigners who had been convicted of crimes removed.
However, as people are being caught and returned at the border, the numbers of immigrants with serious criminal records is dropping, The Times reports.
Seventy-two percent of the people deported were Mexicans, but there were also increases from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, where many of the influx of migrants came from this past summer.
While the Obama administration is deporting people in record numbers, the president is working out his plan to use executive action to extend protection to larger groups of immigrants.
Obama has said he'll
postpone that order until after the November midterm elections.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.