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Ed Rubenstein reports that Immigration and Custom Enforcement's (ICE) published data on removals do not support the projections that deportations are up under the Obama administration. Rubenstein says the ICE"s own data shows deportations down 3.1 percent over the first nine months of fiscal 2010 after increasing in the last two years of the Bush administration.

In FY2008-George W. Bush's last full fiscal year-deportations rose a whopping 26.8% from the prior year. But growth slowed to 5.6% in FY2009, the last eight months of which were on Obama's watch.

And now the rate of deportations in has actually turned negative. As things stand now, Fiscal 2010, which started on October 1, 2009 and is Obama's first full year, is on course to be the first since FY2002 in which deportations will have declined.

And it's very hard to see how Morton's blithe estimate of "about 400,000" deportations can be reached.

Rubenstein also notes that Secure Communities is making the deportation numbers look better:

To be sure, not all types of deportations have declined. Convicted criminal removals rose 37% in the first nine months of FY2010 compared to the same period of FY2009.

Mr. Morton credits Obama's "rational" immigration policy for this, adding: "You've got to have aggressive enforcement against criminal offenders. You have to have a secure border. You have to have some integrity in the system."

Reality check: most of the rise in criminal deportations is attributable to the "Secure Communities" program, a Bush initiative inherited by Mr. Obama. While ICE takes full credit for expanding the program, the real impetus comes from state and local governments. They are sick and tired of footing the bill for holding illegal aliens in their lock ups.

If these numbers hold up, then things will be even worse than I reported in my last column on this subject.