FoxNews/AP

Deportation Increase in U.S., 350,000 Illegal Immigrants Sent Home in 2008

CHICAGO — Just after dawn, Gerardo Lopez Arellano shuffles along in a line of 51 other shackled men on an isolated tarmac where a white, unmarked federal jet is waiting to take them to the U.S.-Mexico border.

The 24-year-old construction worker who grew up near the Texas border was deported twice before this year, but he is indifferent on this cool morning at O’Hare International Airport.

“I’ll probably be back,” he told The Associated Press.

Arellano is one of nearly 11,200 illegal immigrants deported this year through Chicago, the location of a field office for the Midwest region covered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. By contrast, in 2004 about 6,600 people were deported from the region that includes Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri and Wisconsin.

Nationwide, deportations have also increased, with nearly 350,000 immigrants sent home through September 2008, compared with about 174,000 in the same period in 2004.

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