You really have to hand it to the Obama administration. It doesn't always do the right thing, but it sure knows how to cover its tracks when it does the wrong thing.

It changes the subject, misrepresents facts, redirects blame, manipulates statistics and creates a fog of confusion so thick that it can slip away and avoid accountability.

I know people are confused because, I hear over and over again from Latino officials and immigration activists the same administration talking points – none of which are even a little bit true.

Here are three things for which the administration would prefer not to be held accountable by Hispanic voters, especially during a re-election campaign:

• The fact that the administration has, for political reasons, racked up a record number of deportations in the three years President Barack Obama has held office.

When the administration gets heat from immigration advocates or Latino lawmakers, it deflects the criticism by blaming Republicans in Congress for not passing immigration reform. If the White House could blame Republicans for deportations, it would. But that's not easy to do since all the apprehensions and deportations – more than 1.2 million since Obama's inauguration – are happening through the executive branch.

• The fact that these deportation statistics have been made possible by a poorly conceived and dangerous program called Secure Communities that was forced down the throats of state and local governments and that uses local police as a force multiplier by roping officers into the enforcement of federal immigration law. This is the same thing, by the way, that the administration is faulting Arizona, Alabama, South Carolina and other states for doing with a series of likewise poorly conceived and dangerous laws.

• The fact that the administration appears to be actively trying to mislead supporters into believing that most of the people it has deported were "criminals" and not folks who were just trying to earn a living. Or that it is employing "prosecutorial discretion" so illegal immigrants, whose only infraction is being out of status or who have extenuating circumstances – college students, or parents with U.S.-born children, or senior citizens – can remain in the United States.

Neither assertion is true, according to a group of persistent researchers with the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Why persistent? The researchers tried to get information from the Department of Homeland Security under the Freedom of Information Act about who was deported. The department wouldn't provide it. So the researchers did an end run and asked the Department of Justice for the information. After all, it is the DOJ that prosecutes "criminals." So Justice would know how many of the people being arrested and shipped out of the country fit that description, and it shared the information.

In October 2011, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano claimed that 55 percent of the people deported in fiscal 2011 were "criminal aliens." Cecilia Munoz, the head of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, wrote an article on the White House Blog in which she claimed that "more than half of all removals are people with criminal records."

So what did the researchers find? Poring over the records of thousands of deportation proceedings in immigration courts in all 50 states, they discovered that the actual percentage of deportees who were criminal aliens is much lower than the administration claimed. According to TRAC, only about 14.9 percent of the people deported this year were charged with any criminal offense. This means that 85.1 percent committed no infraction other than being in the country illegally, which is a civil offense. These aren't criminals. These are the housekeepers and landscapers to whom we give our security codes.

Why does this matter? Because it looks as though administration officials have been caught in a lie. The truth is this bunch is trying to deport every illegal immigrant it can get its hands on – whether they're a drug dealer or a gardener – and then going to great lengths to advance the perception that only undesirables are being removed.

Thus, the White House is doing the same thing that Democrats are always accusing Republicans of doing: demonizing immigrants. And for that, the Obama administration must be held accountable.

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Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group.

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