In November 2002, driven by a growing awareness within the Asian and Pacific Islander immigrant communities that more and more people were getting deported, youth activists at AYPAL, based in Oakland, initiated a campaign to find out what was going on and what they could do about it. AYPAL found that the problem of deportation was much worse than the isolated incidents we had heard about, and it is only growing more severe. In 1996, Congress enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), which made it a lot easier to deport immigrants, including many legal permanent residents who had lived in the United States for many years. They were considered deportable if they had committed any crime involving prison or probation time that added up to one year or more. (See "Overview of IIRIRA" section.)
AYPAL's research findings:
- Hundreds of thousands of people are being deported every year to countries all around the world, and there was a huge increase in deportations from 1996 to 1998, coinciding with IIRIRA being implemented in April 1997.
- The overwhelming majority of "criminal removals" are for non-violent crimes.
- Deportations hurt families by potentially leaving hundreds of thousands of children who are left behind in poverty.
- Despite claims that immigrants are contributing to high crime rates, they are actually less likely than native-born citizens to commit crimes.
- Immigrants released from jail are less likely than the native born to be repeat offenders.
- Immigrants are being deported to countries that the US State Department deems too dangerous to travel to.
- Another reason besides IIRIRA for the huge increase in deportations is that many more people in general (both immigrants and native born) are being sent to prison and for longer sentences because of policy changes like "three strikes" and mandatory minimum sentencing.