The Obama administration has been steadily decreasing the amount of deportations in 2015, which could see the number of undocumented immigrants deported from the United States fall to its lowest level in almost a decade. This news comes as the White House fights a court challenge over President Obama’s executive action to protect millions of undocumented immigrants already illegally living and working in the country from the threat of possible deportation.
The implementation of the president’s executive action on immigration reform is currently on hold after a federal judge slapped an injunction on it back in February. Federal immigration officials had deported around 127,000 undocumented immigrants by the middle of this month, which equates to around 20,000 individuals per month since the 2015 fiscal year began in October.
At this level it would seem that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be deporting the lowest number of undocumented immigrants since 208,000 people were deported by the Bush administration in 2008. “It’s clear to me that the department no longer seems to have a will to enforce immigration laws,” claims the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Iowa Republican senator Charles Grassley.
Jeh Johnson, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, claims that the reason there have been fewer deportations is simply because there have been fewer people caught trying to cross the border into the US.