In An Election Year Deportations Plummet

Imagine that:

The number of deportation cases filed by federal immigration officials dropped by nearly a third in the first three months of the fiscal year, according to a report by the Syracuse University Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

The drop recorded in the last three months of 2011 may reflect the Obama administration's plan to focus its deportation efforts by weighing a variety of discretionary factors, including whether the person is a veteran, came to the U.S. as a child or is a college student, according to the report.

Or, perhaps, because Obama needs the Hispanic vote and it wouldn't look good if he's sending their relatives back to Mexico. I don't expect these numbers to pick up until we have another president.