Obama's Review of Deportation could cut ‘what little is left’ of Enforcement

Critics of the Obama administration's deportation policies are concerned that an internal review could lead to deeper cuts of "what little is left" of immigration enforcement. 

The White House announced earlier this month that Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, at the president's request, would review enforcement policies. The decision came after Johnson, President Obama and White House officials met with immigrant and Latino advocacy groups, many of whom have slammed the administration for being too tough. One has gone so far as to call Obama the "deporter in chief."

But a look at the numbers shows deportations under this administration have been limited -- Obama's critics would say, gutted. 

"The evidence reveals that the administration has carried out a dramatic nullification of federal law," Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement.

The question, then, is how much more the administration is willing to cut deportations under pressure from advocacy groups. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement reports that it carried out 368,644 removals in fiscal 2013. But the overwhelming majority of those fell into two categories -- illegal immigrants caught crossing the border, and illegal immigrants convicted of a crime in the U.S. Ninety-four percent of all deportations last year fell into one of those two categories.

Further, many of those convicted of a crime were found guilty of serious felonies. 

A report by Sessions' office drilled deeper into the data, finding that just 23,000 people were removed from the country last year who did not fall into those categories. Of them, 13,000 were described as "fugitives or habitual offenders/previous deportees."

The Federation for American Immigration Reform warned that the internal DHS review could soon chip away at "what little is left of immigration enforcement." A statement from the group called it "yet another escalation of [Obama's] ongoing defiance of U.S. immigration laws."

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