Obama Amnesty: Deportations At Record Low

The Obama backdoor amnesty plan is in full force, with a record amount of illegal immigrants spared from deportation and a huge increase in the number of those allowed to remain the United States.

The shift is striking, according to the nonprofit university group that obtained government records outlining the drastic change. The New York-based nonpartisan research center, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), provides detailed information about the operation of hundreds of government agencies.  Immigration is one of many areas it researches.

This week TRAC revealed that during the first three months of fiscal year 2012, cases disposed of in the nation’s immigration courts showed a serious drop in deportation orders and an increase in the number of individuals allowed to stay in the U.S. That means that individuals were ordered removed in only half of the cases, the lowest rate in the past two decades.

An additional 14.0 percent received a “voluntary departure” order to leave the country, up slightly from 13.2 percent during the previous quarter, the records show.  Counting both removal and voluntary departure orders, slightly fewer than two out of every three cases (64.8 percent) in the first quarter of fiscal year 2012 ended in a deportation order, also a historic low.

The government records also show that, among individuals determined by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to have violated immigration laws, more than one in three (34.4 percent) were allowed to stay in the U.S. This also represented a historic high, which is illustrated in a chart that includes figures for the last several years.

Clearly, the Obama Administration’s stealth amnesty plan to suspend the deportations of most illegal aliens is in play here. The scandalous measure, which has led to a monstrous increase in the dismissal of deportations, was first reported by Texas’s largest newspaper in 2010. Shortly after the story broke, Judicial Watch requested records on the deportation suspensions from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

After DHS stonewalled the release of records for nearly a year, JW filed a lawsuit last spring. A few weeks ago the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued a ruling criticizing the Obama DHS for failing to abide by FOIA law. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly chastised the agency for its inadequate explanations for withholding certain documents, ruling in part that the agency failed to provide sufficient factual context for much of the information withheld.

While on the combined subject of lying and illegal immigration, last month TRAC exposed DHS records that show the agency repeatedly lied to Congress, the American people and the media by drastically increasing the number of individuals that have been apprehended, deported or detained. Check that story out here.