Illegal immigrant deportations up under Obama

August 2nd, 2010, 10:41 am
Dena Bunis, Washington Bureau Chief

The Obama administration is deporting more illegal immigrants than the Bush administration did, according to new figures released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and analyzed by Syracuse University’s data research project TRAC.

According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) data, during the first nine months of federal fiscal year 2010 – that would be Oct. 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010 – 279,035 illegal immigrants were either deported or left voluntarily. That compares with 254,763 during the same period in 2008 and 141,837 during the same period in 2005.

Much has been made in recent months about whether the Obama administration has been enforcing the nation’s immigration laws. Gov. Jan Brewer has said the main reason she supported Arizona’s tough new immigration law – gutted last week in the first round of court actions – was because the federal government wasn’t doing its job in combating illegal immigration.

And during an interview on Fox News Sunday, former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said that Obama didn’t have the “cojonesâ€