GOP: Border security remains issue despite statistics
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August 08, 2010 12:30 AM
By JAZMINE ULLOA, The Brownsville Herald

An independent study that found that deportations of illegal immigrants have increased under President Barack Obama drew fire from Texas Republicans who said the figures skirt Obama’s inadequate response to the issue of border security.

The report released last week by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University said that 279,035 undocumented immigrants had been deported in the first nine months of this fiscal year — a 10 percent increase compared to the 254,763 deportations in the same time frame in 2008, the last and busiest year of President George W. Bush’s administration.

The findings come amid a tense political debate that has pitted comprehensive immigration reform against questions about whether the Obama administration has done enough to secure the nation’s borders.

Supporters of immigration reform have said the nation is in a period of enforcement, in which not only deportations but also immigration prosecutions continue at high levels, similar to the situation under Bush.

Studies show Obama continues to pour billions of dollars into the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some immigration attorneys say he has stepped up the criminalization of immigrants so much that they have given the system a new name — “crimmigration.â€