Deportations Come Mostly from Border, DHS Chief Says

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson acknowledged Tuesday that his department’s deportation numbers are now mostly made up of illegal immigrants caught at the border, not just those from the interior, which means they can’t be compared one-to-one with deportations under President Bush or other prior administrations.

The administration has argued it is tougher on illegal immigration than previous presidents, and immigrant-rights groups have excoriated President Obama, calling him the “deporter-in-chief” for having kicked out nearly 2 million immigrants during his five-year tenure.

But Republican critics have argued those deportation numbers are artificially inflated because more than half of those being deported were new arrivals, caught at the border by the U.S. Border Patrol. Previous administrations primarily counted only those caught in the interior of the U.S. by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Under the Obama administration, more than half of those removals that were attributed to ICE are actually a result of Border Patrol arrests that wouldn’t have been counted in prior administrations,” said Rep. John Culberson, Texas Republican.

“Correct,” Mr. Johnson confirmed.

That would mean that in a one-to-one comparison with the final years of the Bush administration, deportations of those same people under Mr. Obama had actually fallen, according to immigration analysts who have studied the data.

In 2013, ICE was responsible for about 133,000 of the 368,000 immigrants removed. The Washington Times calculated that meant a less than 1 percent risk of an illegal immigrant living in the interior of the U.S. being deported.

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In one key step, the Obama administration this year is calling for a cut in detention beds that hold immigrants awaiting deportation, from the 34,000 level mandated by law to slightly more than 30,500.

“We believe that is not the best and highest use of our resources, given our current estimates of who we need to detain, who we regard as public safety, national security, border security threats,” Mr. Johnson said.

Homeland Security officials argue that rather than holding illegal immigrants in detention facilities, they can be given supervised release, which he said is more cost-effective.