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Despite a heightened emphasis on securing U.S. borders and thwarting terrorism since the 2001 attacks, neither the reason nor the number of deportation actions against undocumented immigrants in Colorado has changed.
In 2001, there were 4,175 deportation proceedings in the state. There were 4,098 in the 2010-11 fiscal year that ended in July.
More than 70 percent of the current-year cases have been brought against illegal immigrants for crossing the border illegally rather than for the commission of other crimes, according to analysis done by the nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
Nationally, the overall number of deportation proceedings is up 45 percent in the decade since 9/11.
In the 10 years before the attack, 1.6 million deportation cases were heard in immigration courts. In the 10 years since, there have been 2.3 million cases.
Still, requests for removal orders based on terrorism and national security charges have dropped since the terrorist attacks.
In the decade before the 9/11 attacks, there were 88 deportation cases involving terrorism charges. In the decade since, there have been 37 such cases.
At the same time, deportation orders for those charged only with immigration violations jumped sharply — from 1.2 million before the attacks to 1.9 million after.
"This was very surprising. You would have expected all the numbers to go up," said Susan B. Long, a Syracuse clearinghouse statistician who has spent years sifting through the deportation data.
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