The Obama Regime constantly claims that its can only deport 400,000 illegal aliens a year because of budget concerns.  That is, of course, nonsense.  The Regime is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in man hours assisting illegal aliens who have already been arrested, ordered deported or whom are in deportation proceedings, to remain in the U.S. and even spending additional hundreds of thousands of dollars giving those aliens benefits like employment authorization. 

While the official figures have not been released, leaks to ABC claim that the Regime deported 396,906 aliens, again short of their 400,000 deportations goal.

ABC News/USA Today by Alan Gomez and Kevin Johnson June 16, 2012 

Most Illegal Immigrants Deported Last Year Were Criminals

The U.S. deported nearly 400,000 illegal immigrants last year, and an increasing number of them were convicted criminals, according to figures set for release Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security.

Deportations have been on the rise for the past decade, and the 396,906 illegal immigrants deported in fiscal year 2011 is the highest number yet, according to the figures.

Under the Obama administration, Homeland Security issued new priorities to focus deportations on convicted criminals, people who pose threats to national security and repeated border-crossers. Last year, 55% of those deported were convicted criminals, the highest percentage in nearly a decade.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said the numbers reflect the administration's "focus on sensible immigration."

"In the face of limited resources, we have to prioritize, and that starts with criminal offenders," Morton said. "We are making sure that people who game the system face the consequences." 

What is remarkable though is that only 55% of the deportations were criminals.  With all the effort on its "priorities," ICE is still unable to remove many criminal aliens.  Of course, all illegal aliens are criminal aliens.  You can't be an illegal alien without violating many criminal laws and not just those laws that deal with immigration.  The fact is that removing criminal aliens is much more difficult that removing other illegal aliens, especially since ICE refuses to implement Expedited Removal against criminal aliens.

And we don't know yet how the Regime came by this number.  Each year the Regime has always claimed aliens deported in the previous fiscal year and claimed Voluntary Returns from the U.S. Border Patrol in its numbers.  So the numbers are always lies.

So, we shall see, but in the end, even with whatever manipulation of the numbers, the Regime could not meet its goal of 400,000 deportations.  A number that could easily be 1 million if DHS made a real effort.