For years, federal immigration authorities have hailed as an enforcement success the annual growth in deportations of foreign nationals who have been convicted of serious crimes or caught living or working in the United States without papers.

What authorities have not highlighted is the simultaneous growth in the number of previously deported foreign nationals who have returned to the United States illegally either by sneaking through the porous Mexican border or by traveling on boats from the Bahamas to South Florida.

While annual illegal reentries are not as numerous as deportations, over time they contribute to an erosion of enforcement gains. For example, in fiscal year 2012 at least 409,849 undocumented immigrants were deported. But during the same period, more than 160,000 previously deported foreign nationals returned illegally. By now, three years later, roughly the same number of people deported in 2012 have returned, immigration experts say.

The returns not only undermine immigration authorities’ claims of enforcement success but also highlight the inefficiency of border controls, experts say.

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