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Since Sept. 11, 2001, deportations in the U.S. have exploded, mostly due to the immigration charge of entering the country without inspection, not for national security threats, according to a report released recently by a University of Syracuse-based nonprofit.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse released its analysis, which is based on records from 20 years of deportation cases obtained using the Freedom of Information Act.
Reasons cited in deportation proceedings are broadly categorized into immigration violations, such as illegal entry, and criminal charges, including aggravated felonies.
In Oklahoma for the past decade, immigration violations have consistently been above 70 percent of proceedings. In the previous decade, violations of immigration law ranged from 55 percent to 90 percent, according to a Tulsa World analysis of TRAC data.
The state had five deportation cases citing terrorism or national security concerns since 1998 in immigration courts, TRAC found. The last occurred in 2009.
The Department of Homeland Security, which operates the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
"Senior officials in these agencies have repeatedly asserted that their primary enforcement mission was to deport terrorists, persons who threatened the national security and serious criminals from the United States," the TRAC report states.
"An examination of millions of case-by-case government records about the day-to-day actions of the DHS and ICE, however, has determined that these frequent claims - made by senior executives under both President Bush and President Obama - are misleading."
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