The Department of Homeland Security arrested 261 people who were here under the Obama-era DACA deportation amnesty program and had deported 86 of them, the department revealed in a letter to Congress made public this week.
The data, sent to Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, covered the period from Jan. 1 to Nov. 19 last year.
DHS said the vast majority of those arrested — 241 — had “criminal histories.”
The Democrats decried the arrests, calling them “deeply troubling.”
“These arrests disrupt families, harm communities, and inflict unnecessary social, emotional, and economic costs. And it is a waste of taxpayer dollars,” they said in a statement.
They also questioned Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s statement that most of the arrestees had criminal records, saying she didn’t provide any details to support that figure.
They called on Ms. Noem to reveal the basis for the arrests and deportations.
In her letter to senators, the secretary had said privacy interests limited what she could say about the cases.
“ICE has determined that disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy of the DACA recipients, which outweighs any public interest of releasing this information without their consent,” she said.
DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, was created in 2012 under President Obama as a workaround to normal immigration law. It categorically granted a stay of deportation to illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. before age 16 and who had worked toward an education and kept a relatively clean criminal record.
At its peak, it protected 800,000 people, who dubbed themselves “Dreamers” after a piece of legislation in Congress — which has never become law — that would grant them a pathway to citizenship.
The program has been frozen for years following decisions by the first Trump administration and a series of court challenges. The freeze has also whittled the number of migrants protected by DACA down to 515,570, as of last June 30.
DACA brings a stay of deportation and grants work permits, allowing beneficiaries to hold jobs and lay down roots.
DACA recipients work in many fields, including as lawyers, teachers and medical professionals. Some states have even allowed them to become gun-carrying police officers, exploiting a loophole in gun laws that generally bar illegal immigrants from possessing firearms.
Some DACA recipients have also had run-ins with the law.
The Obama administration had to scramble to rewrite the rules after it was revealed that suspected gang members had been approved for status.
And The Washington Times has reported on a spate of DACA recipients who were accused of helping smuggle other illegal immigrants into the U.S.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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