2014 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: Removal Numbers — A Latino Removal System?
Jennifer Koh posted a link to the 2014 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, which was recently released by the Department of Homeland Security. Over the next week or so, I will highlight some of the data that I find interesting in the 2014 Yearbook.
I first looked at removals, which many immigrant rights advocates claim to be enforced in a discriminatory fashion. Table 41 on page 113 includes statistical information about “Aliens Removed by Criminal Status and Country of Nationality: Fiscal Years 2005 to 2014.”
I looked at 2013 and 2014. In 2014, there were 414, 561 removals, a drop from 435,498 in 2013.
In 2014, 167,740 of the removals were for criminal and 246,741 were non-criminal. 403,656, or 97.7 percent, of the removals were from North America. 275,911 were from Mexico, 26,685 from El Salvador, 54,153 from Guatemala, and 40, 560 from Honduras; these four countries constitute 91.2 percent of the total persons removed.
It is hard to declare definitively that the removal system is skewed without knowing the statistics about noncitizens who might be eligible for removal. Still, the fact that Latinos comprise well over 90 percent of removals, and constitute significantly smaller percentages of all lawful permanent resident and undocumented immigrant populations in the United States, should make us pause to wonder why Latinos are overrepresented in removals.
KJ