More than 600 Azuay residents deported by foreign governments in 2016, most from the U.S.

Although U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump says he will soon begin massive deportations of illegal aliens, he will have to beat the record currently being set daily by Barack Obama.

U.S. President Barack Obama

Immigration officials in Ecuador say that the Obama administration is conducting more deportations than any president in U.S. history, with many of them affecting residents of Cuenca and Azuay Province.

Last week, Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility reported that 28 deportees from the U.S. arrived on a single flight to Cuenca.

So far in 2016, 635 people have been sent back to Azuay Province from overseas.  “The vast majority of deportees from the Austro come from the U.S.,” said Humberto Cordero, the ministry’s regional director. “Deportations are common practice among nations, including Ecuador, but the U.S. is involved in more than 90% of them worldwide,” he added.

Migration scholar Franklin Ortiz says that the government of the U.S. has been increasing deportation in recent years. “Because of comments by Trump, many people have not noticed the larger numbers of foreigners being expelled from. Obama has tripled the number of deportations conducted under George Bush.” In total, Ortiz says, more than 2.6 million have been deported since Obama took office.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates that as many as one million Ecuadorians live in the U.S., many of them without visas.