Deportation and crime

This article from the New York Daily News website tells the story of a few individuals who were faced with deportation after committing crimes. The first one mentioned was a man from Guyana who was almost sent back after being caught for a crime he committed a decade prior. Since then he'd gotten involved in nonprofit organizations dealing with criminal justice, and the people he'd met through that work were enough to keep him in the country. However, most people in his situation are not so lucky.

It might seem like an unusual case, but apparently it isn't at all unusual for immigrants who commit crimes to be deported, even if they came here legally. According to the article, this became common practice in the mid-90s under the Clinton administration, mostly because of the War on Drugs. Obama has continued the trend, and the article claims that the number of deported criminals under his administration is nearly 2 million.

The article makes it clear that not everyone caught in this situation are planning to turn their lives around. In many cases, they really are dangerous criminals who are likely to keep breaking the law once they're out of jail. However, whether deporting them is a good idea or not is a complicated question, especially if they came here legally. Even criminals have families, after all, and deporting them could mean sending them away from their friends and loved ones. Furthermore, deporting criminals does not necessarily make them less likely to be repeat offenders. It seems to me like it's just dumping the problem on someone else, where it's not as visible, instead of actually working to solve it. Then again, I'm no expert on this issue, so there are probably plenty of other elements to it that I'm not aware of.