Border agency accused of political maneuvering after pulling report

Most of the people the U.S. Border Patrol stopped from sneaking into the country last year were from countries other than Mexico, according to agency statistics, a startling shift that might have provided fodder for politicians leading up to Tuesday’s election.

But they didn’t get much of a chance. The Border Patrol’s annual statistics were posted on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website for about five hours on Oct. 10, then taken down. Now some are questioning whether the decision to pull back the data was another example of the Obama administration playing politics with public information.

Even before Tuesday, the Obama administration said it was waiting until after the midterm elections to deal with immigration reform so that any losses would not be blamed on the Democrats’ proposal. For some, removing the apprehension statistics – which both parties could use to criticize U.S. immigration laws – was another flatly political move.

“It worries me that they may have been taken down for purely political reasons,” said U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. “If the information is ready it should be made available. The idea that it was and then yanked down for political reasons is outrageous.”