Nearly 68,000 undocumented immigrants in the U.S. who have been convicted of crimes were released instead of being deported, according to documents published by the Center for Immigration Studies.
The documents, released Monday, show that Immigration Customs Enforcement released the immigrants sometime in 2013. A total of 193,000 undocumented immigrants with prior convictions were encountered by ICE that year, Fox News reported. However, 67,897 were released instead of being sent home. Most were released in New York and New Jersey.
According to ICE, "the vast majority of these releases occurred because of current policies that shield most illegal aliens from enforcement, not because the aliens turned out to have legal status," the center's report said.
The center, a conservative think-tank, said the numbers are a result of the Obama administration's "prosecutorial discretion" policies. ICE arrests have declined 40 percent since the discretion policies were implemented in 2011, the New York Post reported.
"These figures suggest that despite claims of a focus on public safety, the administration's prosecutorial discretion criteria are allowing factors such as family relationships, political considerations, or attention from advocacy groups to trump criminal convictions as a factor leading to deportation," the report said.
But according to ICE, however, the enforcement agency does what it can to remove undocumented immigrants with criminal pasts.
"In Fiscal Year 2013 the agency removed 216,000 convicted criminals," ICE spokeswoman Dani Bennett said in a statement obtained by the NY Post. "The percentage of criminals removed continues to rise."
ICE also accused the center, which supports stronger immigration laws, of exaggerating the statistics, FoxNews reported. Some of the immigrants were convicted of small offenses.
The documents did not indicate what crimes the released immigrants were convicted of. However, according to a 2012 report from House Republicans of 26,000 undocumented immigrants, most were convicted for drunk driving, Fox News reported.
