How thousands of immigrants without convictions are deported from the US

During the first presidential term of Barack Obama, the number of deportations of immigrants exceeded all record figures in the United States, and Obama himself could not get close to these figures during his second term. About 400, thousands of immigrants were expelled from the States each year. Moreover, many of them were deported, not when they tried to enter the United States, but from local communities in which they had already settled.

But the main question has long been how federal authorities found or targeted immigrants who were then deported. Moreover, among them are tens of thousands of people who have no criminal record and have not committed anything illegal.

Last report American Immigration Board Partially answers this question: the CAP (Criminal Alien Program) for catching foreign criminals. This is an outdated model of interaction between local prisons and the federal government to strengthen immigration controls. The program relies primarily on local law enforcement agencies, which can identify potential lawbreakers among immigrants.

Some of the immigrants were found through a program called Safe Communities, which allows officials to check the fingerprints of all suspects and criminals arrested for any violation. But many others have been targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by appearing on lists of people in their custody compiled by local offices and submitted to federal databases.

Because most immigrants deported from a country by ICE were found by city or state law enforcement, it was easier for the federal government to label them as “aliens with a criminal record.” A local police officer can easily find a reason to stop, question, and arrest someone who simply "looks suspicious."

It is illegal for illegal immigrants to commute to work, driving without a driver's license is also illegal, and most illegal immigrants cannot obtain a license. Under the CAP program, federal authorities can take an illegal immigrant into custody immediately after he is brought to the station. There is no need to even charge him with a crime.

The numbers of deportees vary from state to state. However, even those states in which this demonstration was previously small were beginning to actively use the CAP program in order to deport as many immigrants as possible. Among other things, the number of deportations of visitors from Mexico and Central America has increased markedly.

Over a four-year period from October 2009 to August 2013, more than a quarter of immigrants deported had no criminal record, a new report finds. However, during Obama's second presidential term, his administration shifted its focus to immigrants who pose a particular danger to American society and stopped deporting people without a criminal record from the country in such large numbers.

However, minor offenses are punished quite severely. For example, 18% of immigrants were deported for drug-related offenses—many more cases involving drug possession than drug sales and distribution. 20% of deportees were expelled from the United States for traffic violations.

However, if about 500 thousands of people were deported under one pretext or another, another two million people who fell under suspicion under the CAP program are still in the US. Perhaps for the reason that this measure cannot be applied to them: they are legal immigrants who can lose their status only in the case of specific offenses, or US citizens whose names were mistakenly entered by local police into the database as immigrants.