Suppose you were the P.R. flack for a government agency and had some awkward information that nonetheless had to be released. A regular Friday afternoon news dump wouldn’t do, because of how bad it is. You need a miracle.
And then it hits you: Christmas week! Congress is gone. The presidential campaigns are in low gear. Half of Washington isn’t even at work, judging by how light the traffic is. As a character in a beloved Christmas movie observes, “It’s Christmas, Theo. It’s the time of miracles.”
You asked for miracles – I give you the D.H.S.: “Interior Enforcement Disintegrates Further in 2015“.
The original DHS press release, embargoed until 3 p.m., buries the lede in a lot of rigmarole, but the highpoints are these:
- Total deportations by ICE (including both border and interior cases) in Fiscal Year 2015 declined 25 percent from FY 2014, from 315,943 in 2014 to 235,413 in 2015.
- Interior deportations by ICE declined 31 percent, from 100,114 in 2014 to 69,478 in 2015.
- Deportations of criminal aliens from the interior declined 27 percent, from 86,923 in 2014 to 63,127 in 2015.
The number of interior deportations (as opposed to Border Patrol returns that Obama’s people now count as “deportations”) is now less than one-third of what it was in 2011, before the promulgation of new policies further handcuffing ICE agents. The number of criminal alien deportations from the interior is less than half of what it was in 2011.
Another few years of Obama (or Hillary) and we’ll be inviting deported illegals to move back. Oh, wait, Rubio already put that in his bill. As Mother Jones described it (my emphasis):
But when it came to who was eligible for that path to citizenship, both sides initially dug in, according to several Democratic aides who were present at the negotiations. Then Rubio blinked, agreeing to a compromise closer to the Democrats’ proposal. And he made an additional and unexpected concession: The bill would allow immigrants who had already been deported to return to the United States and get on the road to citizenship.
Rubio “gave up a lot, probably for something he should have still held firm,” says one aide. “And it’s not clear if that was because he was a bad negotiator or he had a good heart.”
But I’m sure he’s totally changed his mind about that too.