 |
|
More than 95% of all deportees are from Latin America and the Caribbean, with black immigrants being the most overrepresented racial group among noncitizens facing deportation on criminal grounds (Raff 2017). Still, Obama’s claim that he was targeting “felons, not families” contradicted ICE’s own statistics, which consistently showed that two-thirds of all deportees are removed for immigration-related violations rather than criminal convictions (Rosenblum and McCabe 2014); fewer than 7% of all deportations involve an “aggravated felony” that, depending on the state, could be as minor as a shoplifting conviction (TRAC 2018). Nonetheless, the spectacle of police-ICE cooperation and media coverage of exceptionally egregious crimes committed by noncitizens has fed the public’s perception of immigrants as threats to public safety.
|
|
|
|
