While Barack Obama vowed that his administration would push for passing a comprehensive immigration reform, immigration authorities have been making more arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants. The increasingly hard-line efforts of immigration authorities are sweeping up undocumented immigrants with no criminal records. The increasing number of arrests is becoming a matter of serious concern within the Chinese community in New York.
According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Fiscal Year 2009 Annual Financial Report, the agency deported an unprecedented 387,790 undocumented immigrants last year. Compared to fiscal year 2008, when 369,221 undocumented immigrants were deported, the number of deportations in 2009 increased by 5 percent. The New York Immigration Coalition expressed concern with the increase, believing that Obama's handling of immigration enforcement in his first year in office runs contrary to the spirit of immigration reform.
On March 23rd, Huang Keqiang, chairman of the Lin Zexu Foundation, indicated that ICE has repeatedly assured to the immigrant community that it is only focusing on arresting undocumented immigrants with criminal records and that the arrests would be initiated based on tips and complaints. Recently, however, the Chinese community in New York has witnessed an increase of arrests in the homes of undocumented immigrants with no criminal records. This trend has raised much alarm in the community.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had previously announced that the number of people deported during Obama's first year in office had increased by 47 percent. However, it corrected the number, stating that there was a 5 percent increase, with many of the undocumented immigrants choosing "voluntary departure" [referring to the act of leaving on their own will rather than being physically removed by ICE], and that the number of just those deported by ICE increased by 13 percent. ICE also announced earlier this month that as of February 1, two months into the fiscal year 2010, there was a 17 percent decrease in the number of deportations, compared to the previous year.
Analysis from immigrant groups shows, however, that the lower number of deportations is merely a reduction of large-scale workplace raids by law enforcement, with no abatement on targeting families.
The Assistant Secretary of Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement John Morton recently said that the agency is looking to confirm the identities of Chinese undocumented immigrants and the deportation orders. Morton also said that last year, of the 380,000 illegal immigrants who were deported, 136,000 of them had criminal records. In other words, more than 250,000 deportees had no criminal record.
