By Adeoba Olusegun
At least 376 Nigerians were ordered to leave the United States this year, after being found guilty of breaking immigration laws and other crimes.
The data from the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has revealed .
Data obtained from the ICE and compiled in a June report by a global tracking website on government policy, TRAC, says 376 Nigerians, who mainly resided in Texas, New Jersey, California, New York and others, were served court orders to leave the U.S. between January and June, having been convicted of immigration and criminal charges.
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TRAC is a U.S.-based tracking website that keeps databases of immigration, FBI cases and firearms data for public access.
The data referenced in this story was obtained by TRAC and sourced directly from the ICE through FOI requests.
This comes even as the scramble to flatten the spread of COVID-19 continues with the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policy on immigrants.
According Premium Times, About 3,019 Nigerians were deported from the U.S for criminal convictions in 15 years, starting from ICE’s establishment in 2003 and ending in 2018.
But within the first half of this year, 335 Nigerians violated immigration laws including unlawful entry into the country, overstayed visas, fake documents and many others.
About 41 other Nigerians have criminal records of aggravated felonies such as fraud, drug crimes, sex and firearms offences.
Over time, ‘criminal aliens’ often top the list of priorities when it comes to deportation from the U.S.
This was laid bare more during the Trump administration as the American president vowed to “chase people with criminal records away from our country.”
Once a foreign national is arrested for an offence by the Department of Homeland Security, they are tried before an immigration judge, which is often a lengthy legal process. The individual is most often flagged for deportation. Therefore, a deportation case is filed.
Deportation proceedings are conducted to determine whether the individual charged with violating immigration laws should be removed from the U.S. By removal, it means deportation.
During the proceedings, the individual could appeal the case and the term could be lessened to a voluntary departure but this does not provide for alternate erasure of criminal records.
The individual could be allowed to remain in the country if the judge finds the charges against him or her are not sustained or the government requests that the charges be dropped, as well as where the judge finds the other provisions in the immigration law entitles the individual “relief” from removal.
Between January and June this year, 2,700 deportation cases involving Nigerians were filed with immigration and criminal charges; the outcome of the court proceedings showed that over 370 Nigerians were ordered deported.
