Last week President Barack Obama told immigration reform activists he would look into reducing deportations of illegal immigrants.
This follows criticism that Obama is falling short of his promises on comprehensive immigration legislation. Not only that, but over the last few years, some have gone as far as to call him “deporter-in-chief.”
On Univision’s talk show Al Punto, a Spanish-language political talk show, host Jorge Ramos interviewed a political activist on March 9, 2014, about her choice to use that nickname in a recent speech.
“The truth is we’re at the point of reaching 2 million deportations,” said Janet Murguía, National Council of La Raza president, in an interview PolitiFact translated from Spanish. “For us, this is a historic level, more than any other president of the United States. Our community is in crisis, and this isn’t acceptable.”
PolitiFact has looked into deportation statistics under the Obama administration, but not since he’s started his second term. Let’s see how deportations under Obama compare to those under previous presidents.
Laura Vazquez, a senior immigration legislative analyst at La Raza, told us that Murguía was referring to deportation numbers from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
ICE publishes yearly immigration statistics. However, ICE numbers lump together two separate statistics: removals and returns. Removals are formal orders to leave the country issued by a judge. Returns, sometimes called expedited removals, are issued by ICE agents. There aren’t formal consequences attached with returns, and returns technically don’t count as “ deportations,”according to Homeland Security themselves.
The other common source for deportation numbers is from Homeland Security’s Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. Here, we can count all the removals by fiscal year. This isn’t a perfect assessment, because presidents’ terms don’t start on the same day new fiscal years do. We only have access to this data through fiscal year 2012, so we can’t track Obama’s most recent deportations.
The more comprehensive Homeland Security data dates back to 1892. Here, we’ll take a closer look at deportations under Obama and other recent presidents. Deportations ramped up starting during the Clinton years.
On average, Obama is outpacing Bush by year. But since Obama hasn’t yet served two full terms, Bush has still overseen more deportations than any other president.
The most recent spike in deportations started at the end of the George W. Bush administration, said Pew Research Center associate Ana Gonzalez Barrera. In 2007, Bush increased the consequences for people illegally crossing the border, a strategy Obama has continued so far.
Our ruling
Murguía defended her “deporter-in-chief” nickname for Obama by saying he’s deported more people than any other president. Obama is on track to outpace Bush by the end of his term, but he’s not quite there yet, according to Homeland Security data. At nearly 1.6 million deportations, that’s still some distance from “approaching 2 million.”
It’s too soon to say that Obama has deported more people than any other president. But with the information available, it looks like he’s on track to do so. We rate her claim Half True.
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