By Cristina Silva, Times Staff Writer
St. Petersburg Time
July 6, 2010
"President Barack Obama has deported more people in his first year in office than George W. Bush in his last year in office."
Jorge Ramos, Sunday in an interview on ABC's This Week
The ruling
On the July 4, 2010, edition of ABC's This Week, Jorge Ramos, a prominent news anchor for Univision, the Spanish-language television network, said that "President Barack Obama has deported more people in his first year in office than George W. Bush in his last year in office."
With immigration policy a hot political topic these days, we thought Ramos' statement was worth checking.
When we contacted Ramos, he said the information had come from the White House, which, in turn, referred us to the Department of Homeland Security.
A DHS spokesman provided deportation statistics updated through June 7, 2010. In fiscal year 2008 (which ran from Oct. 1, 2007, through Sept. 30, 2008), there were 369,221 deportations. During fiscal year 2009 (which ran from Oct. 1, 2008, through Sept. 30, 2009) there were 387,790 deportations. That's an increase of 18,569 from one year to the next, a jump of about 5 percent. So, using these numbers, Ramos is correct.
It's worth mentioning a few caveats, however.
• The fiscal years do not square precisely with presidential years. Fiscal year 2008 was entirely under Bush, while fiscal year 2009 consisted of four months under Bush and eight under Obama. So those deportation figures don't quite prove the Bush-Obama comparison.
• It's not clear that Obama policies played a significant role in the deportation increase, as Ramos implies. Michelle Mittelstadt, a spokesman for the Migration Policy Institute, said "deportation numbers have been on a steadily upward trajectory" since 2002, due to policy changes initially undertaken during the Bush administration. Indeed, between 2002 and 2008, deportations rose by 117 percent.
• DHS also provided totals for part of fiscal year 2010 - from Oct. 1, 2009, through June 7, 2010. That number was 227,163. If you prorate that amount to a full 12 months, you get a full-year total of 330,419, less than each of the two previous years. However, immigration experts said deportations aren't spaced equally throughout the year, so prorating is not necessarily valid.
These caveats add a bit of uncertainty to Ramos' claim. So we rate it Mostly True.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/deportations-were-high-in-obamas-first-year-in-office/1107334
