Friday, February 14, 2014

"Report: Gov't success in immigration court drops"

"Nearly half of immigrants facing deportation are now winning their cases before an immigration judge, their highest success rate in more than 20 years, according to a new analysis of court data published Thursday."
The U.S. government has been losing more deportation cases each year since 2009, according to the Transaction Records Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which collects and studies federal prosecution records.
It is no coincidence that Eric Holder, who wants felons to have the right to vote, has been the Attorneys General since 2009.
Immigrants in California, New York and Oregon have been most successful recently, while judges in Georgia, Louisiana and Utah have sided more often with the government, according to TRAC.
Or, to put it another way, judges in California, New York and Oregon have sided more often with the illegals "undocumented".
Immigration supporters accuse the Obama administration of deporting too many people, but Republicans say the president is too lenient on immigrants living in the country illegally.
As more "undocumented" persons come in to the country, it is perfectly conceivable that more of them would be picked up on questions unrelated to their immigration status. It would defy human nature, if, as more undocumented immigrants snuck in, less of them were to run afoul of the law.
Nearly 2 million immigrants have been removed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement under President Barack Obama.
For the rest of the article click AP

24 comments:

ricpic said...

After Pedro has downed his thirteenth cerveza to celebrate the end of the workweek and his off the books pay packet on Friday and he gets in his car and drives it over the center line head on into your car Montana Urban Schmendrik or ARM or phx, you'll die, but feeling noble and good, so there's always that dividend for the progressive creators of a borderless America.

Revenant said...

You would think an article this long would have included some useful information, if only by accident.

Saying that the success rate has declined every year since 2009 tells us nothing useful. Did it decline from 100% to 52%? From 53% to 52%?

Rabel said...

An answer for Revenant.

Revenant said...

Thanks, Rabel. :)

Rabel said...

But wait, there's more;

Removal orders granted by immigration judges.

except that

Removal order means what I say it means.

Aridog said...

We have friends who are ICE Officers in the Criminal Deportation section. As Rabels' chart shows, deportation as a whole has dropped by 1/3 between 2008 and now. I will ask if that figure applies to criminal aliens or even includes them.

A couple of years ago one of the officers remarked off hand that if the trend continues they expect they will be assigned to track people down in order to hand them a nice new "green card."

Come to think of it I need to ask them more questions, such as just what qualifies an alien to not be deported? Refugee? What?

I note that Guam is in the group of states/territories deporting people. Who in hell sneaks in to Guam? And how? It is a fookin' island.

PS: Rabel...good to see you're back to your concise self. You and AllenS are my heros of concise statements that say a lot. I was worried with that 338 word outburst on the Rand Paul/Meade/Inga/everyone else fandango back there.

Rabel said...

It's an interesting set-up that I was not aware of.

The "immigration courts" cited are run by the DOJ under administrative judges appointed by the DOJ. The "prosecutors" in these cases work for the Department of Homeland Security.

So Obama's DHS brings deportation cases in front of Obama's DOJ.

The graphs clearly show a sharp downward trend in the number of illegals deported under Obama's reign despite the reporters regurgitation of the 2 million figure.

Rabel said...

An answer for Ari. Looks like 12% in FY 2014 were criminal cases.

See the pie chart. I like pie.

Aridog said...

Pie is nice. 35% of teh pie says "other immigration charges" (over-staying a visa?) ...er, and that is separate from simple "un-inspected entry" (sneaked in) at 46%...e.g., 81% are just dropping by illegally.

Another way to interpret that is the 81% are breaking the law, but that's okay.

This will take more that Salomon to solve this riddle. Given I know some "undocumented aliens" and find them productive people, doing work that no one else wants to do, I find it difficult to see them as criminals. A few are assholes who think America owes & Americans owe them whatever they want, but I don't find that kind in the majority. However, how do we determine what is criminal?

Revenant said...

This TRAC report seems relevant too. Immigration cases doubled in 2008 and have stayed between 50 to 100% above the Bush-years average since. A jump in quantity followed by a drop in quality -- it is an old story.

Revenant said...

Another interesting tidbit from that is that the overwhelmingly most common charge is illegal RE-entry.

It appears that we spend most of our deportation efforts on people we already deported. The Monty Python fan in me almost hopes that's true.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Is there any reason we should not suspect those deportation statistics are being cooked by the Obama administration? Have the numbers ever been audited by an independent auditor?

I also seem to remember Big Sis refused to tell Congress what metrics are used by INS to run and manage that humongous federal agency?

I'm Full of Soup said...

Thanks Rabel!

Aren't the Dems claiming Obama has deported 2MM people since he was president?

Does every deportee go before a judge? If so, the judicial orders don't add up to 2MM in the last five years.

Also, does everyone get deported when there is a judicial order? Or do some slip thru the cracks like Obama's uncle did 20 or 30 years ago?

Rabel said...

Rev,

I believe those are criminal cases filed in the normal federal court system as opposed to the administrative DOJ courts I mentioned above.

My best guess is the increase in criminal court filings under Obama was the result of a policy decision as to the proper venue.

That is, taking more criminal cases (most of which appear to be misdemeanors) involving illegal aliens to criminal courts for prosecution rather than to the administrative DOJ courts for deportation.

The result would me more criminal convictions but fewer deportations. But I'm just speculating.

Rabel said...

My speculatin" appears to be correct

more or less.

Rabel said...

"If so, the judicial orders don't add up to 2MM in the last five years."

From FY 2009 to 2014 I see 678,000 removal orders by DOJ immigration judges of which 175,000 were granted "relief".

Actual deportation would differ from that (turnarounds at the border?) but it seems a long way from 2 million.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Rabel - thanks.

If I was in Congress, I'd go and look at the INS deportation logs and audit a few days at random to see if their numbers really add up. I have my doubts when suddenly every Dem uses the same talking point that Obama has deported 2mm people.

I'm Full of Soup said...

It reminds me that some believe they cooked the books on the unemployment rate right before the 2012 election.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

The graphs clearly show a sharp downward trend in the number of illegals deported under Obama's reign despite the reporters regurgitation of the 2 million figure.

All the institutions of government have been politicized and weaponized under Obama

ken in tx said...

The Economist just printed an article saying that Obama is deporting more people than any other president before him, and it is just terrible, they think. I don't know who to believe anymore.

Rabel said...

Thanks for the tip Ken.

The Economist does answer the question about the variance in the deportation numbers:

"Of the 369,000 people deported last year, roughly two-thirds were people who had been stopped while trying to cross the border."

Whether or not those two-thirds should count as deportations is open to interpretation but it is a good fact to know when assessing Obama's immigration performance.

Rabel said...

Just to finish up:

678,000 removal orders minus 175,000 relief orders times 3 (to account for the two thirds stopped at the border) equals about 1.5 million.

With rounding and reporting lags that gets you close to the 2 million number.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Interesting data Ken and Rabel- thanks for diggng it up.

I think the govt should not include people stopped at the border as deportations but let's walk thru the numbers they have shared with us.

If one-third of 369,000 deportations are people who were in the country already, that means last year we found and deported 123,000 of the 11,000,000 illegals who are here already.

That represents only 1% of the 11 million who are in the country illegally. To me, that is a pitiful metric and a poor ROI for the billions we spend on enforcement.

Aridog said...

Rabel...when I quiz my friends from ICE the next time we have dinner, thanks to all the information you provided...I won't tell them it was you who put me up to it.

But you were ... and Revenant gets an "assist ... :)

PS: Yeah, I've been watching hockey lately.