ICE has completed its mid-year assessment of foreign countries that cooperate with ICE in accepting back their foreign nationals that have been ordered deported from the United States. Countries that refuse to accept, or that delay the acceptance of, their nationals are considered to be uncooperative or recalcitrant.

Hong Kong is the only country that has been added to list of uncooperative countries but ICE has successfully worked with nine other countries, including Iraq and Somalia, to remove them from the list. The number of recalcitrant countries has dropped from 20 to 12 since the presidential election. This makes it the shortest list in nearly a decade.

According to the report, the number of countries who are “At-Risk of Non-Compliance” has also decreased from 55 to 47 countries.

The decline is a result of Pres. Trump’s Jan. 25 Enhancing Interior Enforcement executive order that ordered visas suspended from countries that refused to take back their citizens. This executive order addresses #7 in NumbersUSA’s 10 Steps to Fix our Broken Immigration Enforcement System.

“On matters like this, the Trump administration is speaking not so softly and waving the sharp stick of visa sanctions,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies.

When a country refuses to accept their criminal aliens back they are often released back into American communities because the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government can only hold illegal aliens for a certain amount of time.

Marlen Pineiro, assistant director for removal operations at ICE, said that ICE has moved to a more formal process for identifying recalcitrant countries.

In the past the list was based on the sense of state of the country. Now ICE conducts a review of each country looking at certain metrics including how long it takes to issue travel documents, whether the country will conduct identity interviews to facilitate deportation, and whether the country has a favorable deportation-to-release ratio.

Here is the full list:

Uncooperative Countries:

Burma

Cambodia

China

Cuba

Eritrea

Guinea

Hong Kong

Iran

Laos

Morocco

South Sudan

Vietnam

Countries At Risk of Non-Compliance:

Afghanistan

Algeria

Azerbaijan

Bangladesh

Benin

Bermuda

Botswana

Brazil

British Virgin Islands

Burkina Faso

Burundi

DR Congo

Dominica

Egypt

Ethiopia

Gambia

Ghana

Iraq

Ivory Coast

Kenya

Lebanon

Libya

Mali

Mauritania

Mauritius

Montserrat

Mozambique

Nepal

Niger

Nigeria

Pakistan

Rwanda

Samoa

Senegal

Serbia

Sierra Leone

St. Lucia

Sudan

Swaziland

Tanzania

Thailand

Togo

Tunisia

Uganda

Venezuela

Zambia

Zimbabwe

Read more on this story at The Washington Times.