The Impacts of the Obama Administration’s Enforcement Now, Enforecment Forever Immigration Approach

 
We have talked before how the Obama administration has promised future immigration reform while ramping up immigration enforcement.  What we have seen is more enforcement, more criminal prosecutions, record levels of deportations and detentions, more deaths, and more human misery but no immigration reform.  Morover, there are collateral impacts of the immigration enforcement emphasis on other federal law enforcement activities.  TRAC’s latest report “Federal Criminal Enforcement and Staffing: How Do the Obama and Bush Administrations Compare?” reviews the data showing that, with federal enforcement increasingly focused on immigration matters, other kinds of felony prosecutions — particularly those brought in districts outside the southwest — have declined.  The comparison of the first two years under President Obama with the last two years of the Bush administration, shows these impacts of the emphasis on criminal immigration enforcement.

KJ