Latest from DHS: “Deporter-in-Chief” Hardly Deporting Anyone

By Joe Guzzardi
April 27, 2015

Advocates for immigration law enforcement often use the term “open borders” to describe the end result of President Obama’s defanging the various Department of Homeland Security agencies charged with maintaining American sovereignty. Until recently, “open borders” has been used figuratively although it’s been clear for months that a literal interpretation is the White House’s goal.

Five months after Obama issued his get-even executive action amnesty to punish law-abiding citizens for his mid-term electoral embarrassment, the administration is removing virtually no one, even including criminals. According to the latest DHS statistics, in the first six months of fiscal 2015 which began October 1, only 117,181 aliens have been deported (out of an approximate 11 million illegal immigrants who reside unlawfully in the U.S.), a total that represents only three-quarters of the 157,365 deportations during the same period last year. Shockingly, the same lax enforcement applies to criminals. Through April 4, criminal deportations dropped 30 percent, down from 96,500 to 68,000.

Despite the pro-immigration lobby’s insistence that Obama is the deporter-in-chief and pleas from protestors “not to break up families,” deportations are down 41 percent since the president announced his 2012 deferred action for childhood arrivals. Although Obama promised that his DACA amnesty, and a 2014 broader amnesty that would apply to about five million DACA parents of DACAs, would allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement to focus on felons instead of families, neither category of aliens is being removed.

As always, the excuses for refusing to act are weak. An ICE spokeswoman told the Washington Times that removals of Central American nationals who surged across the border last summer and others who are embarking on another journey this spring take more time, effort, and resources. Another enforcement deterrent, alleges ICE, is the sanctuary city policies established in more than 200 states, cities and counties that prevent local police from cooperating with ICE. Solving those so called hindrances to enforcement would be simple: send immigration judges to the border to adjudicate cases on the spot, and withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities. Yet neither solution is under consideration.

Most Central Americans are blatantly smuggled into the U.S. and will pay coyotes as much as $10,000 per person to make the dangerous trip. The United Nations reports that the Central American smuggling industry generated nearly $7 billion in fees in 2010, even years before the huge surges began.

Because of social media and the worldwide print coverage of Obama’s welcoming policies, Central Americans and other potentially unlawful entrants have no reason not to come. They’re fully aware that no serious consequences await them. Even if they’re given an immigration court date to return for a hearing, they rarely show up. Last June in Dallas, eight of ten scheduled did not appear.

Going as far back as 2011, border patrol agents were told not to apprehend illegal immigrants—that’s four solid years of non-enforcement with 20 months left in Obama’s administration for continued non-enforcement that could have negative, irreversible consequences for the nation.

As long as the White House blocks agents from doing their jobs, then no amount of increased personnel at the border or money put into infrastructure can stop aliens, drug runners or terrorists from getting to the U.S., an eventuality that Obama not only apparently supports but seems perfectly comfortable with.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow. Contact him at [email protected]