U.S. immigration officials are going to be busy for the next few years as they work diligently to comply with President Donald J. Trump’s directives to deport those who are in our country illegally.

That’s because the number of people who need to be deported is larger the populations of either Sacramento, Calif., or Atlanta.

As reported by the Washington Examiner, a backlog of 550,000 illegals currently languishing in the U.S. await deportation, a figure that even stunned so-called “mainstream media” reporters.

This week, as U.S. immigration officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies outlined their successes under Trump, a reporter asked Matthew L. Albence, executive director for enforcement and removal operations, if he had the number of outstanding deportation orders.

“Ballpark is going to be around 550,000,” Albence responded.

“Whoa, why is it so high?” the reporter responded.

“Well, for a large part of the last four or five years we’ve been unable to take enforcement action against those individuals,” came the answer.

In other words, immigration officials were forbidden to do their sworn duty — and the duty for which American taxpayers were expecting — by Obama, who began delaying many deportation actions starting in 2014, Albence noted further.

Even when ICE officers discovered an illegal alien sitting in jail somewhere, the enforcement director told the reporter that they were told not to seize him or her.

“Our officers had to turn their heads and walk the other way,” he said. “So that’s a large part of that problem, the fact that we couldn’t enforce the law.”

And that policy, combined with so-called illegal “sanctuary city” policies adopted by local governments, are what get American citizens like Kate Steinle killed.

You remember her, right? She was the San Francisco resident who was murdered by illegal alien and five-time deportee Jose Ines Garcia Zarate as she strolled along a popular peer with her dad in 2015. Garcia Zarate stole a handgun from the automobile of a federal agent and fired it into a crowd; the bullet struck Steinle, 32, who died in her father’s arms.

Well, a San Fran jury last week failed to convict him of the murder, and instead decided to convict him on what was essentially just a gun crime (because the insane liberals who live in San Francisco are more angry about the Second Amendment than they are illegal aliens who kill American citizens because they’re left to remain in our country by a president of the United States).

But it wasn’t just Obama’s fault that our immigration authorities now have such a massive backlog of deportees to deal with. It was a gaggle of liberal federal judges, some of whom Obama appointed, who also ensured that even murderous illegals could remain in America, ICE officials said.

“We need to hold liberal judges accountable,” said ICE Acting Director Thomas D. Homan, who has been nominated by the president to become the agency’s appointed director.

One additional factor that is preventing immigration enforcement is, as I mentioned above, the 300 “sanctuary” jurisdictions throughout the country that refuse to allow ICE officers into their jails to seize illegal aliens. (Related: California “sanctuary city” protects self-admitted MURDERER and illegal alien who killed innocent woman)

Homan noted that his agency has plans to fight those cities, as well as other obstructions, in order to send a strong message to illegal alien populations living there that the days of an enabling White House are over.

“There has to be a consequence and a deterrence to illegal activity or the illegal activity won’t stop,” he said.

“We’ve made a lot of headway this year, more than I’ve seen in a long time, and we’ve got to keep going down this road. We’ve got to keep momentum going,” Homan added.

Agreed. Because there is no inherent right to just flood into America. Like every other nation on earth (including Mexico, by the way), we have the right and the moral obligation to make our own immigration rules and expect that they will be followed — or that there will be a price to pay, legally speaking, for violations of those rules.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

NewsTarget.com

TheNationalSentinel.com

WashingtonExaminer.com