Homeland Security Today has reviewed the Syracuse University study of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement filings in immigration courts. The verdict, as I predicted, cases filed against criminal aliens are also declining.

HST February 22, 2012 by Mickey McCarter

Report: ICE Deportation Of Criminal Aliens Dropped In First Quarter Of FY 2012
The report could not substantiate that ICE was indeed focusing on more cases involving serious criminals, however. ICE sought the deportation of 24,073 aliens in the country illegally and another 8,884 that committed other immigration violations. Only 1,300 individuals, or 3.3 percent, were identified as “aggravated felons.”

The percentage of aggravated felons under deportation fell in the quarter, the report concluded. In the fourth quarter of FY 2011, ICE identified 3.8 percent of its deportees as aggravated felons and 4 percent six months ago.

ICE charged another 4,193 illegal aliens with other criminal activities in the last quarter, the report noted. Combined with the aggravated felons, the total number of criminals identified by ICE for deportation came to 14 percent, or one in seven, of deportation proceedings. Two years ago, that number was 17.3 percent, or one in six, the report said.

And those criminal aliens are not the worst of the worst as ICE claims, but minor criminals.

But the report also said ICE labels some criminal convictions as “serious crimes” although they are not deportable offenses under US law. As such, ICE may make public pronouncements on the number of criminal aliens deported even if their offenses were minor.

“Many Americans may not realize that very minor violations — violations that at most might subject one to a small fine, require no court appearance, and for which the only notice received is a ticket — are classified as ‘crimes’ in some jurisdictions including the federal government,” the report stated.

Because of this, the “meaningfulness” of ICE’s figures on the percentage of criminal aliens deported is “greatly diminished,” the report said.

Serious offenses counted by ICE include a range of transgressions, from disorderly conduct to possession of obscene material to possession of marijuana — among others.

Nothing wrong with deporting minor criminals by itself, but combine it with a general decline in deportations, the Obama Regime Administrative Amnesty is as bad as predicted. It gives the lie, though, to the claim by ICE that it is ignoring so-called non-criminal aliens to concentrate on criminal aliens. Deportations of both classes of aliens are declining.