April 1, 2014

LA Times: "High deportation figures are misleading"

From the Los Angeles Times:
High deportation figures are misleading 
Immigrants living illegally beyond the border area are less likely to be deported under 'deporter in chief' President Obama, contrary to widespread belief.

By Brian Bennett 
April 1, 2014, 8:55 p.m. 
WASHINGTON — Immigration activists have sharply criticized President Obama for a rising volume of deportations, labeling him the "deporter in chief" and staging large protests that have harmed his standing with some Latinos, a key group of voters for Democrats. 
But the portrait of a steadily increasing number of deportations rests on statistics that conceal almost as much as they disclose. A closer examination shows that immigrants living illegally in most of the continental U.S. are less likely to be deported today than before Obama came to office, according to immigration data. 
Expulsions of people who are settled and working in the United States have fallen steadily since his first year in office, and are down more than 40% since 2009. 
On the other side of the ledger, the number of people deported at or near the border has gone up — primarily as a result of changing who gets counted in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency's deportation statistics. 
The vast majority of those border crossers would not have been treated as formal deportations under most previous administrations. If all removals were tallied, the total sent back to Mexico each year would have been far higher under those previous administrations than it is now. ...
Until recent years, most people caught illegally crossing the southern border were simply bused back into Mexico in what officials called "voluntary returns," but which critics derisively termed "catch and release." Those removals, which during the 1990s reached more 1 million a year, were not counted in Immigration and Customs Enforcement's deportation statistics. 
Now, the vast majority of border crossers who are apprehended get fingerprinted and formally deported. The change began during the George W. Bush administration and accelerated under Obama. The policy stemmed in part from a desire to ensure that people who had crossed into the country illegally would have formal charges on their records. 
In the Obama years, all of the increase in deportations has involved people picked up within 100 miles of the border, most of whom have just recently crossed over. In 2013, almost two-thirds of deportations were in that category.
At the same time, the administration largely ended immigration roundups at workplaces and shifted investigators into targeting business owners who illegally hired foreign workers. 
"If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero — it's just highly unlikely to happen," John Sandweg, until recently the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in an interview. 
Even when immigration officials want to deport someone who already has settled in the country, doing so is "virtually impossible" because of a lengthy backlog in the immigration courts, Sandweg said. Once people who have no prior removals or convictions are placed in deportation proceedings, actually removing them from the country can take six years or more in some jurisdictions, Sandweg said. 
Deportations of people apprehended in the interior of the U.S., which the immigration agency defines as more than 100 miles from the border, dropped from 237,941 in Obama's first year to 133,551 in 2013, according to immigration data. Four out of five of those deportees came to the attention of immigration authorities after criminal convictions. 
Many of those convictions are related to crossing the border — the other big consequence of the change in the way border removals are handled. 
A growing number of people caught trying to cross the border now have a formal deportation order on their records. Entering the country without legal authorization is not a crime.

Why not?
But once a person has been deported, he can be prosecuted if he reenters the country.  ...
The turn away from deporting immigrants from the interior of the country amounts to an open invitation for people to come to the U.S. on a legal visa and stay, said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). 
"It just cannot be the policy of the U.S. that if somebody gets past the border and gets to St. Louis or Memphis or Austin, Texas, or New York, they are not going to be deported," Sessions said. "The administration is systematically failing to enforce immigration law uniformly."
    

21 comments:

Aaron Gross said...

Why not?

Probably because criminalizing it would put the US in violation of international law: article 31 of the UN Convention Relating to Status of Refugees.

Anonymous said...

1. "Probably because criminalizing it would put the US in violation of international law: article 31 of the UN Convention Relating to Status of Refugees"

I doubt that's it, considering the lax in international law.

2. The LA Times is defending the shield here. See, no real deportations.

3. Has their been any argument from the Republicans? Where's e-verify at these days? Where's the Visa over-stay checking? Hmm?

The only enforcement there ever was was during a brief period after 9/11. Bush chose to invade other countries instead of protect his own country.

Message received.

Anonymous said...

Probably because criminalizing it would put the US in violation of international law: article 31 of the UN Convention Relating to Status of Refugees.

Article 31

Article 31 of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees provides as follows:

1.The Contracting States shall not impose penalties,on account of their illegal entry or presence,on refugees who,coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of Article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization,provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.


I don't think Mexicans flooding across the border to pick up some extra money would qualify for refugee status. And I don't seem to recall that they get around to presenting themselves to US authorities without delay.

Anonymous said...

The only enforcement there ever was was during a brief period after 9/11. Bush chose to invade other countries instead of protect his own country.

As Pat Buchanan so eloquently put it, while Bush was out to save Al Anbar province, he was losing Arizona.

Anonymous said...

Napoleon said that God was on the side of the bigger battalions.

In a civil war ("social war"?), the side with bigger foederati wins.

Aaron Gross said...

@Anonymous, sure, I was just answering the question of why crossing the border without authorization can't be criminalized. The point is that when someone crosses, his status as a refugee or not hasn't yet been determined. Of course if he doesn't present himself immediately to authorities, he can be penalized for his presence.

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous, sure, I was just answering the question of why crossing the border without authorization can't be criminalized. The point is that when someone crosses, his status as a refugee or not hasn't yet been determined. Of course if he doesn't present himself immediately to authorities, he can be penalized for his presence.

In other words, what you said has no relevance to the topic at hand. The people we're talking about aren't fleeing persecution and they definitely don't present themselves to the authorities after crossing the border, as stipulated by the Convention.

(Strictly speaking, the US is not a party to the 1951 Convention, but only the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, although in practice this appears to mean that the Convention applies.)

Aaron Gross said...

Dear Stupid Person,

The "relevance to the topic at hand" is as follows.

LA Times: "Entering the country without legal authorization is not a crime."

Steve Sailer: "Why not?"

Me: "Probably because criminalizing it would put the US in violation of international law."

So my answer is irrelevant? OK, I give up, you guys win, you're just...invincible. Bye, congratulations.

Paulus said...

Who the hell ever thought Obama was deporting illegals in the first place? Is this more chicanery from the MSM?

ben tillman said...

A growing number of people caught trying to cross the border now have a formal deportation order on their records. Entering the country without legal authorization is not a crime.

Yes, it is a crime: 8 USC 1325.

"Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both."

- See more at: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/8/12/II/VIII/1325#sthash.IgBgkQwL.dpuf

Mr. Anon said...

"Aaron Gross said...

Why not?

Probably because criminalizing it would put the US in violation of international law: article 31 of the UN Convention Relating to Status of Refugees."

1.) They aren't refugees.

2.) International law does not supercede US law.

3.) Who cares about international law? We violate international law all the time.

Harry Baldwin said...

No factual information will prevent Democrat supporters like Juan Williams from claiming "this president has deported more undocumented workers than any previous president" when the subject of lax border enforcement comes up. I've noticed that politicians don't worry about whether what they say is true, only whether it works as a rhetorical point. For example, the statistic that women only earn 70% of what men earn for the same job has been convincingly debunked, but since it arouses the female base so effectively politicians are never going to stop saying it. The press is on the side of the Democrats and won't ridicule a Democrat politician who presents false information, so the average voter has no reason to doubt him.

Truth said...

Gays? Knee-Grow presidents, Commies? Broads with the right to vote?

Brothers be strong, our Halcyon days will return!

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/359966/spring-break-florida/

Anonymous said...

ICE rebranded itself as HSI in order to move away from its mission of depirti g aliens and get into prosecuting people for counterfeit handbags and child porn.

Back before Bush II gutted INS and replaced it with the fucked DHS, the Border Patrol was responsible for interior enforcement and had its own investigative/prosecutorial arm, INS Investigations. Much like every other agency out there, in the law enforcement world, it'd be common practice for an investigator to start their career in the Patrol and then move over to Investigations later on.

Post 9/11 a memorandum of understanding was signed between the Border Patrol and ICE in after the dissolution of the INS said that the Border Patrol would leave interior enforcement to ICE, who promptly disregarded that mission.

Discard said...

Should any country complain of our violation of Article 31 or whatever, dump the "refugees" on their soil. We'll be hated no matter what we do, so we may as well look out for ourselves, by any means necessary.

Anonymous said...

Would anyone designing a system they wanted to work design it this way?

Say there was a large conspiracy of criminals who were targeting congtessmen and Forbes 400 members for robbery and rape, and the criminals were getting away with it. Ya think Congress might bother to try to fix the criminal justice system so that they weren't?

Marcelo Gilli said...

What @Aaron Gross said is totally relevant. Not only that, he has been kind enough to explain it with a second post, in no less than crystal-clear English.

Anonymous said...

"[Not deporting anyone from the interior] just can't be the policy..."

Well Jeff, it is the policy. Now what? What are you gonna do about it?

Cogswell said...

What Aaron Gross posted is still irrelevant. We're under no obligation to obey "international law." We can freely disregard it. Boatloads of other countries do so with impunity.

Anonymous said...

Furthermore, any country that refuses to take its citizens is supposed to lose all consular relations (no visas to the USA) and the US stops accepting any flights from their country.

Guess how often that happens.

ben tillman said...

What @Aaron Gross said is totally relevant. Not only that, he has been kind enough to explain it with a second post, in no less than crystal-clear English.

Relevant to what?

He offered it to explain a phenomenon that does not exist. But even if he were right that unauthorized entry weren't a crime, the refugee provision would be irrelevant because it would authorize refugees to enter the country. A law criminalizing unauthorized entry obviously would not apply to refugees and therefore would not conflict with the international law provision.

That's pretty straightforward.