The Huffington Post has recently posted a story that highlights data from a recent report. The report speaks to the fact that young Mexican males were the classification of immigrants most likely to be deported in 2013. The report states that the majority of deportees in 2013 were Mexican, male, and ranged in age from twenties to thirties.

The report was issued by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University and included data obtained from ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement). The report provides the reader with more details than what had previously been made available to the public in past documents. There were close to 370,000 deportations in the U.S. in 2013.

While it is no surprise that the majority of those deported were men, in fact, males made up 93% of all ICE deportees last year, the majority of those men were between the ages of 20 and 29. Last year, that age group accounted for an astounding 155,000 removals. The next highest demographic was males, aged 30 to 39, and accounted for 124,300 deportations last year.

In total, about half of all deportations last year involved immigrants under the age of 30. Approximately 19,800 of those who were deported were no more than 19 years of age. The majority of immigrants deported who were under the age of 20 fell between the ages of 15 and 19.

In general, when the subject of age comes up in a discussion related to removal proceedings, it is not too long before the conversation turns to deferred action and DACA. DACA is short for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

On June 15, 2012, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a memo that said eligible foreign nationals can apply for deferred action through the DACA process. Keep in mind that deferred action is not considered to be an immigration status, but does allow for successful applicants to stay in the U.S. and apply for employment authorization. DACA was implemented in order to help immigrants who came over to the U.S., without documentation, as children. You can read more about deferred action and DACA here.

In addition, deportations were actually down from 2012. In that year, there were approximately 410,000 removals. The largest group impacted by this decrease was Mexican citizens. In 2012, there were about 284,900 Mexicans deported, while 2013 saw that number decrease to 241,5000.

While deportations involving Mexican immigrants decreased from 2012 to 2013, removal proceedings involving Chinese citizens increased from 512 to 815. This accounted for an almost 60% jump. Removal of Canadian immigrants went up in 2013, as well. This number went from 580 to 646, an almost 11% increase.

So, what does all this mean? Well, currently, the Obama Administration is looking at deportation policies and working towards making them more “humane.”

What do you think about this report? On one hand, it is really not surprising that the majority of those placed in removal proceedings are Mexican immigrants. However, it does help to break down the numbers. When these statistics are broken down, it tends to put more of a face on the issue, giving us more than just facts and figures.