I know, she made some radical sounding promises!
But they ain’t radical. Consider the statistics for 2015. In that year, the U.S. deported 235,413 people.
Of those, 165,935 were apprehended at the border or near ports of entry. Clinton has not promised to do anything about that, unless the apprehended are children. I don’t know how many children were deported in 2015, but I do know that only 7,643 unaccompanied children were deported between 2012 and 2015.
Of the 69,478 deportees apprehended away from the border or ports of entry, fully 63,539 were previously convicted of a crime. Of those, 41,516 were convicted felons. (Page 5.)
In other words, Hillary’s promise would cut deportations by at most 29,666 people, if you assume that all the children deported between 2012 and 2015 were both apprehended at the border and deported only in the 2015. That would give you a 12% cut in deportations, which is less than earth-shattering.
In fact, she said only criminals in the debate, not violent criminals. So we can include people with multiple misdemeanors. We’re now down to about 14,658 people who would be spared deportation ... a cut of 6%. And if you take the strictest definition of non-criminal interior deportations (which is what ICE uses, see page 5) you are talking only 5,942 people, implying a cut of less than 3%.
Even you make the same ridiculous assumption about child deportees, you get a reduction of less than 6%. A more realistic assumption (of, say, 3000 child deportations in 2015, all from the border) gets you a 4% cut in deportations under President Clinton. So call it a 4%-6% cut.
Open borders, that is not. As long as Mexico continues to keep Central Americans away from the border, it won’t even lead to another wave of entries.
Trump will demonize her proclamation to avoid deporting non-criminals, of course. (Shudder.) But she will be able to accurately point out that we are talking about risible numbers of people. Whether that will make a difference, I have no idea.
Comments