Washington D.C. (EFE) — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security requested the deportation of 15,821 Mexicans in the first six months of Fiscal Year 2016, the analysis center of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) said Monday.

Mexicans were the immigrant community for whom there were the greatest number of deportation requests by DHS, followed by Salvadorans (14,512), Guatemalans (11,091), Hondurans (7,764) and Chinese (1,830).

The fact that DHS requested deportation in these cases does not mean that the migrants in question were immediately repatriated, but rather that the judicial proceedings that could result in expulsion orders for them were initiated.

Of the total number of immigrants for whom deportation proceedings were initiated during the first half of Fiscal 2016 (from October 2015 through March 2016), one in every four were Mexicans, a percentage significantly below the 35 percent they comprised in Fiscal Year 2015.

In addition, 35 percent of the requests made in the first six months of FY 2016 were for woman accompanied by children or unaccompanied children seeking refuge in the United States, the greater portion of whom come from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Without taking into account the country of origin, so far this fiscal year the United States has opened 63,420 new deportation proceedings against undocumented migrants, and that constitutes a slower rate than during the same period in the last fiscal year.

Besides Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and China, deportation requests also were made for migrants from India, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Brazil and Bangladesh.