Two Million Deportations? Obama May Be There

President Obama has been on pace to reach the two million mark this year for deportations during his presidency. Now, a Los Angeles-based activist group says he’s reached that controversial milestone.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) will hold a press conference on Monday to make the announcement.

The latest statistics available from federal immigration officials date back to the 2013 fiscal year, which ended in September 2013. At that point, the Obama administration had executed more than 1.8 million removals since January 2009, according to data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Using a daily average based on the deportations in 2013, the Obama administration would have already eclipsed the two million mark. ICE did not immediately respond to a request for updated removal statistics.

President Obama recently announced that he’s exploring ways for immigration enforcement to be done “more humanely.”

“We shame the US government, the President of the United States, and the leadership in Congress, especially the House, for allowing millions of immigrants to suffer the indignity of an arrest, the agony of separation from loved ones, and the mercilessness of uprooting families from the place they call home,” said CHIRLA’s executive director, Angelica Salas, in a statement. Last week, Salas was part of a group of leaders who met with President Obama to share their concerns for the families grappling with deportations.

Nationwide, an estimated 4.5 million children who are U.S. citizens by birth live in families where one or more of their parents are undocumented, according to a 2012 study by Human Impact Partners, a health advocacy group. The reports estimated that at least 152,426 U.S.-citizen children were affected by the removal of their parents in the 2012 fiscal year.