A recent analysis of immigration and census data reveals that about 2.5 million illegal immigrants have flooded into the U.S. since President Barack Obama began his tenure in the Oval Office.
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In some cases, agents with ICE asked local law enforcement officials to hold inmates believed to be in the country illegally beyond the length of their jail terms so that they could be transferred to federal custody.
Immigration has become a hot-button topic under the Obama administration as the additional illegal immigrants entered the US after Obama launched a contentious executive order back in 2012 to halt the deportation of young illegal immigrants who entered the country as children.
“Overall, the new enforcement policies that are the focus of this report have the potential to substantially transform the U.S. deportation system, particularly within the U.S. interior”, the report states.
“The net effect of this new guidance will likely be a reduction in deportations from within the interior of the United States as DHS detention and deportation resources are increasingly allocated to more explicitly defined priorities”.
Of an estimated 11 million “unauthorized immigrants” in the US, only 1.4 million have criminal convictions or crossed the border on or after 1 January 2014 – the conditions that make them priorities for deportation under the new guidelines, according to the report.
The report’s author, Marc Rosenblum, notes that there is a margin of error of about 10% for the numbers involved, which largely rely on federal government figures.
How the new policies are implemented, however, will depend on the rollout and implementation of the new deportation program called Priority Enforcement Program or PEP, the report said.
The Priority Enforcement Program tried to answer those concerns.
However, it was learned that illegal immigration was higher under former President George W. Bush, which undermines the GOP’s bid to sound tough on the issue.
Some sanctuary cities, though, like San Francisco, where a woman was fatally shot by an illegal immigrant who had previously been deported five times, refuse to report these arrests to the federal agencies.
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“Essentially, the administration has been engaging in nullification of most immigration laws by simply ruling out the possibility of deporting 87 percent of people who are breaking immigration laws by executive inaction, granting de facto amnesty to people who are here illegally”, he said.
