Immigration and Deportation Laws and Statistics: Obama Administration Processes Deportations of Undocumented Immigrants in Record Numbers
When Obama took office for his second term as president, he received huge amounts of pressure from various immigrant rights advocates as well as progressive Democrats regarding his 4-year deportation spree. Since he assumed office, he has had a very high rate of deportation -- over 2 million people, higher than any other president in the history of the United States. In fact, on a typical day, over 30,000 immigrants face deportation threats and are placed in the world's largest immigration detention prison system. Worse, most of these deportees have never even seen an attorney before their hearing. Some of them have been expelled from the country before they had a chance to defend themselves.
This process has caused at least one-quarter of all deportees to be separated from their children who are already U.S. citizens as well as other family members. Due to this fact, President Obama has ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to revise the practices of the office related to deportation. Obama said that he sympathized with immigrant families and the pain that was caused by the entire process. He said that the changes would provide a more "humane" treatment to undocumented immigrants. However, he said that some of the strict policies would remain in place due to the amount of national security threats.
It was in 2003 when the relationship between terrorism and immigration was cemented by then President George W. Bush, who ordered the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Since then, the funding for the agency has increased from $23 million a year in 2004 to $690 million in 2011. There is no specific group that was targeted by this policy. However, most of the victims are from the Latino, Afro-Caribbean and Muslim communities. Racial profiling of these populations has become worse and little has changed under Obama's administration. However, according to statistics, 59 percent of those noncitizens who were deported have criminal records.