U.S. President Barack Obama is now receiving criticism from immigration advocates as the government announced its intention to deport Central American families.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, a new Obama administration plan to deport a number of Central American families has drawn the ire of advocates and two Democratic presidential candidates and the ridicule of immigration opponents, who doubted that it will achieve its goals.

According to an official with knowledge of the plan, starting next month, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a Department of Homeland Security unit, plans to start rounding up hundreds up families who entered the country illegally and have ignored final orders from an immigration judge to leave.

In recent months, a number of immigrants caught crossing the border have risen, resulting into worries that another migration crisis could be in the making.

In a report by Vox, since the beginning of 2014, about 100,000 families, which consists mostly of mothers with children, have arrived in the country coming from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Most of these families are trying to get asylum in the U.S. as they cite that they are being targeted by gangs.

Some are given their requested asylum, but unfortunately, many have not because of the case they made in the immigration court or because some of them simply did not show up on their scheduled hearing.

And now, the administration is launching a big effort to deport those families starting January, starting to raid residential neighbourhoods to find and arrest the families -- something that many immigrant families have traumatic associations with.

U.S. Border Patrol agents think that many of these families are not really legitimate asylum seekers fearing for their lives, but just people trying to take advantage of the country's immigration system.

In fact, there are reports that border agents are circulating reports that most newcomers from Latin America are coming to the U.S. because they think they can get legal status here, not because they are afraid of their lives.

Fortunately, Border Patrol agents are not in charge of evaluating asylum claims as they allegedly can be too dismissive of legitimate danger these families are facing.

Nonetheless, Yahoo! News reported that Honduras is now preparing for the return of thousands of its citizens following the reports of the U.S. with regards to mass deportation of migrants fleeing due to violence and poverty.

Honduras said that it expects the U.S. to conform with human rights standards regarding these deportation cases.