Giuliani says he wanted to deport all 400,000 illegal immigrants from New York City

Book Excerpt: In New York, illegal immigration took a back seat to making the city safe

Dec 11, 2007 12:00 AM (5 hrs ago) by Bill Sammon, The Examiner

WASHINGTON - Rudy Giuliani says he wanted to deport all 400,000 illegal immigrants from New York City when he was mayor, but ended up welcoming most of those who were “causing me no trouble.”

In an interview for the new book “Meet the Next President,” Giuliani lamented that the Immigration and Naturalization Service deported only 700 to 1,500 of the city’s 400,000 aliens each year during his mayoralty. Giuliani said it was obvious the INS was not about to increase deportation “from 700 or 1,500 to 400,000.”

“If they could, I would have turned all the people over. It would have helped me. I would have had a smaller population. I would have had fewer problems,” the Republican presidential candidate told The Examiner in an interview. “But the practical reality was, they were going to make an infinitesimal, statistically insignificant contribution to the problem. I was stuck with it. And no matter what their promises, they weren’t going to do anything about it.”