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In spite of federal government assurances that criminal undocumented immigrants are being prioritized for deportation, a watchdog group reports that more than 85 percent of removal proceedings initiated in Colorado in the last fiscal year focused on those with only immigration violations.
Of 5,207 deportation cases filed in Colorado through September, 3,602 were against immigrants accused of "entry without inspection," meaning they allegedly crossed the border into the United States illegally. An additional 827 were accused of other immigration charges which can include not having a valid visa, falsely claiming citizenship or being back in the country after previously being deported.
These numbers are the latest released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University-based non-profit that compiles data based on information obtained under Freedom of Information Act requests.
Sue Long, a senior researcher with TRAC, said ICE will not share numbers to show how that agency's statistics were obtained and why they are different than TRAC's.
"We have been unsuccessful in obtaining the information needed from them," Long said.
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