News Americas, WASHINGTON, D.C., Fri. Sept. 27, 2013: If it was a movie it would be another saga in The Return Of The Deportees! But it’s no Hollywood epic for the over 3400,000 more immigrant deportees who were sent back to Latin America and The Caribbean this year alone by U.S. immigration officials, News Americas Now has learnt exclusively.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) deportation statistics obtained and analyzed by News Americas for the Latin America and Caribbean region show that more than 342,830 deportees – both criminal and non-criminals, were iced in Fiscal Year 2013. That’s just between October 1st, 2012 and Sept. 14th 2013.
For fiscal year 2012, that number stood at 233,943 meaning 100,000 more immigrants were added to the tens of thousands who have been sent back to this region since the draconian changes to the 1996 U.S. immigration laws.
Latin America’s 2013 deportee total now stands at 336,681 while the Caribbean’s total is at 4,707.
The majority of the deportees to Latin America – some 230,041 – were sent back to Mexico while Guatemala and Honduras received the next largest batch with 45,561 and 35,145, respectively.
Among the Mexican deportees was Reynaldo Reyes-Alejandro, 26, from Alexandria to Harlingen, Texas who was wanted on a murder charge in his home country.
For the Caribbean, The Dominican Republic again topped the scale of returning deportees with 2,373 while Jamaica was second with 1,046.
The latest deportee numbers come as Hispanic advocates urge President Obama to defer deportation that’s tearing apart families even as a comprehensive immigration reform bill remains stalled in the Republican controlled House.
With thousands being sent back to their region annually, deportation remains a top priority issue for many countries in Central America and the Caribbean. So much so that the United Nations Development Program, (UNDP) even funds a $1 million International Organization for Migration, (IOM) project in Haiti to provide deportee reintegration services, including counseling, vocational training, skills development, and micro-credit lending.
The breakdown of the 2013 year to date removals, as obtained by News Americas, are as follows:
COUNTRY FY13 YTD Removals
Anguilla 3
Antigua & Barbuda 21
Argentina 116
The Bahamas 103
Barbados 26
Belize 164
Bermuda 16
Bolivia 125
Brazil 1,441
British Virgin Islands 5
Cayman Islands 5
Chile 91
Colombia 1,314
Costa Rica 267
Cuba 39
Dominica 22
Dominican Republic 2,373
Ecuador 1,512
El Salvador 20,209
Grenada 11
Guadeloupe 1
Guatemala 45,561
Guyana 149
Haiti 480
Honduras 35,145
Jamaica 1,046
Mexico 230,041
Montserrat 4
Nicaragua 1,257
Panama 112
Paraguay 18
Peru 675
St Kitts-Nevis 17
St Lucia 17
St Vincent & the Grenadines 25
Suriname 12
Trinidad and Tobago 164
Turks and Caicos Islands 5
Uruguay 64
Venezuela 174
