No Child Left Behind: Over 100,000 citizen children's parents deported

The Associated Press reports that "[m]ore than 100,000 parents whose children are U.S. citizens were deported over the decade that ended in 2007, a Department of Homeland Security's investigation has found." The parents were removed from the country on immigration violations or because they had committed crimes. The removals of the 108,434 parents were among the approximately 2.2 million carried out by immigration officials between 1998 and 2007.

The de facto deportation of U.S. citizen children when there parents are deported from the United States has long been a problem, and troubled federal judges like Ninth Circuit Judge Harry Pregerson (He submitted dissents in a series of unpublished dispositions and contends that, in those cases, ordering the deportation of a noncitizen parent in effect will result in the deportation of a U.S. child).