ICE Deportations Still Plummeting; Catch and Release Continues

The Associated Press has published figures from ICE's weekly internal metrics showing that immigration enforcement has continued to decline in 2014. But the reasons offered sound more like spin from the DHS or ICE press office, which for years has peddled the tall tale that the Obama administration is tougher than any other on enforcement.

Writes AP immigration writer Alicia Caldwell:

[ICE] sent home 258,608 immigrants between the start of the budget year last October and July 28 this summer. During the same period a year earlier, it removed 320,167 people — meaning a decrease this year of nearly 20 percent.

Over the same period ending in July 2012, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 344,624 people, some 25 percent more than this year, according to the federal figures obtained by the AP.

I have earlier editions of the same report Caldwell examined that show the same trend. Indeed, it was first reportedby Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times back in April, not long after incoming DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson admitted that the administration previously had been cooking the books to give the impression of record deportations.

Caldwell then seems to restate the administration talking points regarding the reasons for the decline, providing two explanations:

1. "The Obama administration decided as early as summer 2011 to focus its deportation efforts on criminal immigrants or those who posed a threat to national security or public safety." She points out that many non-criminal deportation cases are "stuck" in the immigration court system, which has now a backlog of 400,000 cases. 
    
2. Border Patrol agents are detaining more Central Americans, and the deportation process is more work and takes longer for them, because they have to be flown home.

These "explanations" don't hold water. Let's take them one at a time.