The Obama administration is quietly postponing thousands of deportation orders for immigrants who are in the United States illegally.
The delays will allow more than 56,000 illegal immigrants who have left Central America since 2014 to remain legally in America for several more years, the New York Times reported Thursday.
The administration’s decision to pause deportation proceedings marks a sharp turnaround from its earlier publicized plans to rush cases emanating from the 2014 surge through immigration courts to deter Central American immigrants from crossing into the U.S. illegally.
Federal officials told the Times the delays are due to an enforcement error that allowed tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were supposed to be fitted with GPS ankle bracelets pending their court appearance to go free. Many of the cases have now been pushed back for years, with some as late as 2023.
The government pays a daily fee of $4 to $8 per person to keep track of the GPS devices. Immigration officials said the administration’s recent decision to end the program would save federal agencies millions.
The deportation delays have also been caused by an unprecedented backlog in federal immigration courts.
As of July, over 500,000 cases were pending before immigration courts with just 277 judges across the U.S. to settle them.
The Supreme Court last week dealt a final blow to President Obama’s executive actions on immigration that would spare millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. The high court’s decision will leave in place a lower court’s decision to block the executive order.