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Miami Herald
August 11, 2014

Jeb Bush says few children apprehended at border in 2014 were returned
By Steve Contorno


A study released July 28 (after Bush’s op-ed was published) also seemed to back up the general figure. The Bipartisan Policy Center found about 18,300 cases in 2014 of juveniles from Central America entering the system (meaning, not just apprehended but beginning the legal procedures). Through June 2014, 393 were ordered removed, and 62 left voluntarily. Together, that’s about 2.4 percent of all cases. (These data come from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data-gathering service of Syracuse University, not a federal agency.) According to the Bipartisan Policy Center study, 95 percent of the 2014 cases are still pending. A big reason why only 2 percent have been removed is that so few cases have made it to a hearing so far — not because they failed to show up to a court hearing, as Bush wrote. Compare that to previous years. About 70 percent of the 2013 cases are still pending. Still, in about 15 percent of cases the minor was ordered to return to Central America or left the United States voluntarily. In 2012, more than a quarter of all cases resulted in removal orders; in 2011, it was one-third.


Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
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