![shortformblog:
thedailyfeed:
Immigration arrests skyrocketed between 2005 and 2009, increasing at an average rate of 23% a year.
In 2009, 84,749 people were arrested and charged with immigration offenses, up from 38,041 in 2005, the [the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics] announced yesterday.
With 46 percent of all arrests, illegal immigration was the most common offense for an arrest in 2009, followed by drug violations, accounting for 17 percent, and supervision violations, with 13 percent.
The big question here: Does this increase in arrests correlate with the recent news that immigration-related arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border have reached the lowest level since the 1970s?
The Justice Department numbers seem to only show part of the picture. The Department of Homeland Security has data tables available here that detail immigration enforcement actions. The table shows that Border Patrol “alien apprehensions” have dropped tremendously, even over the past ten years. Their numbers are much higher than the DOJ reported arrests (Homeland Security reports 556,032 Border Patrol apprehensions in `09) but I would imagine apprehension doesn’t necessarily mean that all of those individuals were arrested and charged with immigration crimes.
What I find most striking (and what I’ve posted about before) are the deportation numbers. As you would expect from the DOJ numbers, the number of deportations continues to rise. However, the number of people deported for noncriminal offenses continues to outpace the number of those deported on criminal grounds, contradicting the popular notion that all “illegal immigrants” are criminals. In 2009, a total of 395,165 people were deported, up from 189,026 in 2001. Of those, 67% were deported noncriminal offenses. The numbers were slightly lower in 2010 (a total of 387,242) but noncriminals continued to account for 56% of deportees. I’d like to see exactly where and when the deportees were detained but that doesn’t seem to be detailed in the tables.
It’s a messy system and like with any set of data on any topic, numbers can only give us a partial view of what’s going on. Needless to say, the claim that the GOP nominees keep throwing around, that the Obama administration isn’t doing anything about immigration enforcement, is complete bullshit.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwlzbgHo991qf5y35o1_500.jpg)
shortformblog:
thedailyfeed:
Immigration arrests skyrocketed between 2005 and 2009, increasing at an average rate of 23% a year.
In 2009, 84,749 people were arrested and charged with immigration offenses, up from 38,041 in 2005, the [the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics] announced yesterday.
With 46 percent of all arrests, illegal immigration was the most common offense for an arrest in 2009, followed by drug violations, accounting for 17 percent, and supervision violations, with 13 percent.
The big question here: Does this increase in arrests correlate with the recent news that immigration-related arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border have reached the lowest level since the 1970s?
The Justice Department numbers seem to only show part of the picture. The Department of Homeland Security has data tables available here that detail immigration enforcement actions. The table shows that Border Patrol “alien apprehensions” have dropped tremendously, even over the past ten years. Their numbers are much higher than the DOJ reported arrests (Homeland Security reports 556,032 Border Patrol apprehensions in `09) but I would imagine apprehension doesn’t necessarily mean that all of those individuals were arrested and charged with immigration crimes.
What I find most striking (and what I’ve posted about before) are the deportation numbers. As you would expect from the DOJ numbers, the number of deportations continues to rise. However, the number of people deported for noncriminal offenses continues to outpace the number of those deported on criminal grounds, contradicting the popular notion that all “illegal immigrants” are criminals. In 2009, a total of 395,165 people were deported, up from 189,026 in 2001. Of those, 67% were deported noncriminal offenses. The numbers were slightly lower in 2010 (a total of 387,242) but noncriminals continued to account for 56% of deportees. I’d like to see exactly where and when the deportees were detained but that doesn’t seem to be detailed in the tables.
It’s a messy system and like with any set of data on any topic, numbers can only give us a partial view of what’s going on. Needless to say, the claim that the GOP nominees keep throwing around, that the Obama administration isn’t doing anything about immigration enforcement, is complete bullshit.
