Brooklyn, N.Y. – Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke released the following statement about reports of the excessive application of our nation’s deportation policy which indicated that more than 368,000 immigrants without legal status were deported in 2013, many to nations in the Caribbean and Central America.
 
Many of these men and women have lived in the United States for practically their entire lives. Many arrived here in their youth as children and in many cases entered the United States lawfully and were granted resident status. The number of people who were deported in 2013 includes 2,462 to the Dominican Republic and 1,119 to Jamaica as reported by Journalist Tony Best of New York Carib News.
 
“I have asked President Obama to suspend deportations of non-violent persons until we enact comprehensive immigration reform that permits these families to resolve their legal status in the United States,” said Congresswoman Clarke. “In each instance of deportation, families are forcibly separated – leaving behind a husband or wife without a spouse or children without a parent. These forced separations of families are excessive and has created a crisis that has resulted in more harm than good. The exercise of excessive deportation is inhumane and flies in the face of the values and morals of a nation established by immigrants for immigrants. We cannot allow this exercise to continue.”

Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke, a member of the House Committee on Small Business, Ethics, and Homeland Security, where she is the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies, represents the neighborhoods of Brownsville, Crown Heights, East Flatbush, Flatbush, Gerritsen Beach, Madison, Midwood, Park Slope, Flatlands, Prospect Heights, Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Sheepshead Bay, and Windsor Terrace.