More noncitizens avoiding deportation | www.myajc.com

Federal immigration judges are on track to let 89,383 immigrants facing deportation remain — at least temporarily — in the U.S. this fiscal year, the highest number in at least the past 16 years, according to a report released this week.

The report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse — a research organization at Syracuse University — also shows immigration judges have ordered deportations in 53 percent of their cases so far this fiscal year. That is the lowest percentage since at least 1998.

Immigration judges in Georgia rank second in the U.S. in the percentage of cases in which they are ordering removals this fiscal year at 82 percent, TRAC reports. Louisiana ranks first at 85 percent.

Experts say the changes in national deportation statistics are resulting partly from the Obama administration’s shift in immigration enforcement. The government has been giving special consideration to certain groups of people through a process called “prosecutorial discretion.” Among those getting special attention are families and immigrants who were brought here illegally as children.

Critics say this approach undermines Congress, which is now considering a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration system.

“This policy of prosecutorial discretion has definitely run amok,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy for the Center for Immigration Studies, a research group that advocates tighter immigration controls. “It has gone way beyond what anyone ever intended that concept to be. And so the result is really that the law right now has no teeth.”

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