ICE Inflates 2010 Deportation Numbers to Reach Annual Goal

Monday, December 6, 2010, 4:25 PM EST - posted on NumbersUSA

The Obama Administration has boasted that it deported a record number of illegal aliens in the 2010 fiscal year, but a new report reveals that Immigration and Customs Enforcement used some old numbers to make the actual number of deportations to show higher than reality.

The Administration has claimed that nearly 393,000 illegal aliens were deported in the last fiscal year, setting a new one-year high, but at least 19,000 of the 393,000 were actually deported in 2009. The larger number also represents another 6,500 who were part of a repatriation program that would normally fall under Border Patrol statistics.

When ICE realized that it wouldn't meet its 2009 numbers, officials also encouraged foreign nationals to accept quick deportations in exchange for a clean immigration record. The voluntary returns were also counted as deportations for the department.

"It's not unusual for any administration to get the numbers they need by reaching into their bag of tricks to boost figures," former field office director Neil Clark told the Washington Post.

In 2009, ICE deported 389,834 illegal aliens, so without the additional numbers, they would not have surpassed 2009 numbers. ICE Director John Morton and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano have maintained that there were "no cooking of the books" in achieving the record number of deportations.

For more information, see the Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... id=topnews


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