AP Refuses to Acknowledge Most Illegal Immigrants Already Protected from Deportation

In a story that tries to give President Barack Obama cover for his forthcoming executive amnesty, the Associated Press refuses to acknowledge that nearly all of the country’s illegal immigrants are already essentially protected from being deported.

The Associated Press wrote that Obama “wants to extend protection from deportation to millions of immigrant parents and spouses of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, and expand his 2-year-old program that shields immigrants brought illegally to this country as children.” The AP story can lead pro-amnesty advocates to falsely conclude that these illegal immigrants are more likely than not to be deported, and Obama is the “deporter-in-chief” when he is far from it.

President Barack Obama’s former ICE director, John Sandweg told the Los Angeles Times earlier this year that, “if you are a run-of-the mill immigrant living here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero.” The Times, hardly a conservative outlet, analyzed the deportation data and concluded that “a closer examination shows that immigrants living illegally in most of the continental U.S. are less likely to be deported today than before Obama came to office” and “expulsions of people who are settled and working in the United States have fallen steadily since his first year in office, and are down more than 40% since 2009.”

A report from Sen. Jeff Sessions’ (R-AL) office from earlier this year also completely debunked the myth that Obama is the so-called “deporter-in-chief.” Under the Obama administration, odds are that only the most violent illegal immigrants are being deported. 

According to Department of Homeland Security data from fiscal year 2013, which Sessions’ staff cited, “less than 0.2% of the approximately 12 million illegal immigrants and visa overstays in the U.S. were placed into removal proceedings who did not have serious criminal convictions on their record” and “only about .08% of the approximately 12 million were placed into removal proceedings who were neither convicted of a serious crime nor a repeat immigration violator.” That means “only 0.08% of the nation’s 12 million illegal immigrants were removed from the interior in 2013 who were not convicted criminals or fugitives.”

There have been numerous instances in which illegal immigrants who have been caught, or even turned themselves in to federal authorities, have been immediately released. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have also reportedly been warned, as Breitbart News noted, they would “be subject to disciplinary action” if they followed through on enforcing the country’s immigration laws. In one case, an ICE official was told not to give a “notice to appear” in court to an illegal immigrant caught “driving the vehicle of a known fugitive without a license.” During the border crisis this summer, Obama also instructed federal officials to shift resources from the interior to the border, protecting even more illegal immigrants from deportation.

Obama’s executive amnesty is far from merely giving more formal deportation relief to many illegal immigrants who currently do not have fears about getting deported. It would, just like his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that he enacted by executive fiat, do much more. It would give Social Security numbers, identification cards, and work permits that illegal immigrants can use to take nearly every job in America.