Question: Immigration - deportation statistics

www.ice.gov/graphics/news/newsreleases/articles/droFY04.htm is a Nov 16,2004 news release from US Immigration & Customs Enforcement. "ICE Detention And Removal Sets Record For Fiscal Year 2004; Alien Removals Increase by 12,000; Fugitive Alien Apprehensions Climb 112 Percent.

This news release give figures: "...157,281 aliens total removed in Fiscal Year 2004...Nearly 53 percent of those removed were criminal aliens – that is, aliens who are eligible for removal based upon a criminal conviction in the United States. ICE removals of criminal aliens reached 82,802 in FY04, an increase of 6.6 percent over the previous fiscal year. Removals of non-criminal aliens increased by over 10 percent to 74,479..."

There are dozens of later news releases with figures from individual states and operations, but possibly they are waiting for FY05 total figures to be compiled (Federal Fiscal Year is Oct-Sept).

Another Rad Ref librarian suggests the US Customs and Border Protection site. Their "Questions and Answers" site is at: cbp.gov/xp/cgov/toolbox/questions/#HowtoAskaQuestion
This question form is complex though - you have to click on the "Find an Answer, Ask a Question" hot link, look for the nearest answer you can find
and click on it. I just chose the drop down "statistics/research" topic, clicked "search" and got 27 hits. I chose the nearest one, "What was the volume and value of people and cargo processed by Customs last year", clicked the answer link to "ABOUT CBP" and then came back and rated the answer 0 under the "how well did this answer?" box, because it was only very general passenger volume at airports, etc.

I then got a feedback box where I copied in your question, explaining how I got only the FY04 partial figures from the ICE pages. I gave them my own email (not any of your contact info) and clicked submit. No response as of October 18 (10 days later). You might try sending a question from that form yourself - possibly you would luck out and get somebody who would respond more quickly - but I suspect they are waiting for the FY 05 (Oct 04-Sept 05) figures to be compiled.

You could go through Lexis Academic or Proquest Newspaper databases, at a large academic library (on site only unless you are student/staff), and look for articles on deportation of minors. At public libraries, possibly Masterfile Premier or other general magazine indexes would find some articles with deportation statistics. In Masterfile, the search: deportation and statistic* gets 20 hits, but none seem to give the figures you are looking for, at least for recent years. The key would be to try many searches, using other words like aliens, children, dependents, etc., and looking in general articles on immigration or border security, for example. You could look in the GPO Monthly Catalog database (also on site only, at large public or academic libraries). But a number of searches of firstgov.gov seemed to lead me to the www.ice.gov and related sites. I think the GPO Monthly Catalog would likely get only older figures. My impression, from the www.ice.gov pages, is that this is a rapidly changing situation as more efforts are being made to enforce deportation.

Jim Miller
jmiller2 {at} umd.edu