ICE Enforcement Policies Make No Sense

Ken Dilanian writes for the LA Times:

Advocates say the deportation case against one Nevada couple highlights the continued harassing of many who pose no threat – despite Obama’s promises to target bad actors and help legalize others.

When the Obama administration went before California’s 9th Circuit Court last year seeking to deport a middle-class couple from Nevada, one judge criticized the government’s case as “horrific.” Another labeled it the “most senseless result possible.” A third complained of “an extraordinarily bad use of government resources.”

“These people have worked hard. They have paid their taxes,” Judge William Fletcher said. “Why don’t you go after the bad guys?”

The case against the carpenter and the clerk is one of many examples, immigrant rights advocates and labor activists say, of how the Obama administration has continued a policy of tough immigration enforcement against people who are no threat to the United States, even as the administration calls for a new immigration law designed to legalize many of them.

President Obama promised to “target enforcement efforts at criminals and bad-actor employers,” said Eliseo Medina, international vice president of the Services Employees International Union, a major Obama backer. “And that would have been the right thing to do. But they have not done that.”

Asked by a reporter about the case against Ulises Martinez-Silver and Saturnina Martinez, the Department of Homeland Security said this week that it would indefinitely suspend action against the couple. DHS spokesman Matthew Chandler said the decision reflected the “current enforcement priorities” of pursuing criminals.

But immigrant rights activists and immigration attorneys point to climbing deportation levels and say the government is pursuing untold numbers of equally disturbing cases against students, nannies and janitors.

In one, two Chicago college students, brought to the U.S. by their parents at 13, are facing deportation after being arrested last month on an Amtrak train in Buffalo, N.Y.

“How is that making the country better?” asked Medina, whose union spent millions to help elect Obama.

“People feel betrayed,” said Deepak Bhargava, executive director of Center for Community Change, a pro-immigrant group. “The president never said he was going end immigration enforcement, but he sent a clear signal that he would redirect it to a focus on people with criminal records who are a threat to the country. That hasn’t happened.”

John T. Morton, the former Justice Department prosecutor who runs the Homeland Security Department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, disputed the criticism. His agency has indeed prioritized deporting criminals, he said, noting that removals of such immigrants were slated to increase 40% this year. Click here for the rest of the story.

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