President Obama ‘walks the walk’ when it comes to deportation

Undocumented immigrants are very scared that President-elect Donald Trump will deport hundreds of thousands — if not millions — currently in the United States without proper papers.

What few in the media have bothered to tell Americans is that there was a time when President Barack Obama has often been referred to by immigration groups as the “Deporter in Chief.”

Between 2009 and 2015 his administration removed more than 2.5 million people through immigration orders, which doesn’t include the number of people who “self-deported.”

A quick search of the internet describes the deportation policy during the Obama Administration.

“When it comes to getting tough on immigration, Republican candidates talk the talk, but Obama walks the walk,” one search finds. It adds: “President Obama has deported more people than any U.S. president before him, and almost more than every other president combined from the 20th century.”

These numbers do not include those who are migrating from Central America to the United States and those who are making the journey in reverse.

Documents produced by groups that follow immigration patterns say that “immigration-flow numbers are staggering in both directions. In 2014, it’s estimated that more than 200,000 Central Americans tried to emigrate to the United States without documentation. But the Obama government has been deporting them as fast as it can.”

The Center for Immigration, a group that follows the immigration issue closely, adds that the 2.5 million the Obama Administration deported from 2009 to 2015 is 23 percent higher than those deported by George W. Bush.

It adds that Obama, counting those deported so far in 2016, is now on pace to deport more people than the sum of all 19 presidents who governed the United States from 1892-2000, according to government data.

All of the above is true. But it is also true that the Obama Administration has been cutting down on the number of undocumented criminals.

A document released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee says that to date, ICE has completed 168,781 deportations, a slight decline from the same point in 2015, but a continuation of the steep decline that has occurred since 2012, when the administration took steps to suppress interior enforcement and exempt the vast majority of illegal aliens from deportation.

Undocumented migrants in the country have reason to fear what President-elect Trump might do.

He has gone from saying he’ll build a wall and deport all those who lack proper documents to saying he will deport only those with criminal records.

But they should also remember all those who were deported by President Obama and how little by little Obama decreased the number of undocumented immigrants during his almost eight years in office.

Nobody can defend undocumented criminals. They should all be deported, the sooner the better. But there are many others who have been here for years, if not decades, and those deserve a chance not only to remain in the country but also earn a right to obtain American citizenship.

Obama, counting those deported so far in 2016, is now on pace to deport more people than the sum of all 19 presidents who governed the U.S. from 18922000, according to government data.

Guillermo Martinez