Most of the undocumented people deported from the United States last year were young Mexican men, according to a new study.



Mexican nationals comprised 65.5% of the 368,644 deportees, and of them the vast majority were men in their twenties and thirties, said the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research organisation at Syracuse University.

The figure, based on data obtained from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, showed a more detailed picture than government numbers and shined a fresh light on the Obama administration's deportation policies.

Almost all of the deportees, 93%, were male. Almost four in five, 279,270, were aged between 20 and 39.

The proportion contrasted with a perception in some quarters that young people were no longer the focus of deportations due to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The policy allows so-called "Dreamers" to apply to stay and work legally if they are aged under 31 and have been in the US since before they were 16, among other conditions.

The Syracuse study suggests vast numbers of young Latinos are not eligible or for some reason are scooped up anyway. An average of 1,012 people were deported daily last year.

“The typical individual deported by ICE is relatively young, with a median age of 30,” it found. “Just under half are between 15 and 29 years old.” Ice records show an age range spanning infants to people in their nineties, it said.

Last year represented a 10% drop from 2012 when the Obama administration set a record in deporting 409,849. An estimated 2m have been deported since Obama was elected president in 2008.

After Mexico, the biggest number of deportees ended up in Guatemala (13%), Honduras (10.1%) and El Salvador (5.9%). The rest of the top 10 comprised the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Nicaragua and Jamaica.

China was 11th on the list, with 815 people deported, accounting for 0.2% of the total. Canada had 646, followed by Haiti, with 555, India, with 410, and the Philippines, with 392.

The White House, facing a backlash from Latino leaders who call Obama the “deporter-in-chief”, has insisted it focuses on deporting criminals.

However a New York Times investigation this week found that two-thirds of the 2 million deported had no criminal record or had committed minor offences, such as traffic violations.