In a few hours, Secretary Janet Napolitano will join U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton to announce record-breaking immigration enforcement statistics achieved under the Obama administration—including unprecedented numbers of criminal alien removals and overall alien removals in fiscal year 2010—reflecting this administration’s focus on smart and effective immigration enforcement that prioritizes criminal aliens who pose a national security or public safety threat.

Specifically, in fiscal year 2010, ICE set a record for overall removals of illegal aliens, with more than 392,000 removals nationwide—half of which, more than 195,000, were criminal aliens who pose a public safety threat to American communities.

The fiscal year 2010 records represent increases of more than 23,000 removals overall and 81,000 criminal removals compared to fiscal year 2008—a more than 70 percent increase in removal of criminal aliens from the previous administration.

We've achieved these milestones by expanding the Secure Communities initiative—which uses biometric information and services to identify and remove criminal aliens in state prisons and local jails—and focusing our worksite enforcement efforts on employers who knowingly and repeatedly hire illegal labor. In short, we’ve fundamentally changed the federal government's approach to immigration enforcement, and, as today's announcement demonstrates, we’re getting real results.

Matt Chandler, Deputy Press Secretary