Obama Administration carries out planned deportation sweep

In a move which has left many Obama Administration supporters astonished, the United States Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) Agency has begun a planned deportation sweepover the past weekend. Individuals and family units which have exhausted all legal measures and had received orders of removal were rounded up in morning raids primarily in the states of Georgia, Texas and North Carolina.

Explaining the weekend’s raids, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said Monday that ICE agents “engaged in concerted, nationwide enforcement operations to take into custody and return at a greater rate adults who entered this country illegally with children.

“This should come as no surprise. I have said publicly for months that individuals who constitute enforcement priorities, including families and unaccompanied children, will be removed.”

All those taken into custody “were adults and their children who (i) were apprehended after May 1, 2014 crossing the southern border illegally, (ii) have been issued final orders of removal by an immigration court, and (iii) have exhausted appropriate legal remedies, and have no outstanding appeal or claim for asylum or other humanitarian relief under our laws,” Johnson added.

While in November 2014 President Obama released a series of Executive Actions to ease deportation prioritization for certain undocumented immigrants, excluding specifically the majority of those who came over during the “border surge”, these actions have been stalled by legal actions by dozens of states.

Latino immigration advocates have a variety of livid responses to the move by the Obama Administration:

Marisa Franco, director of the national #Not1More Campaign, said DHS raids “are part of a pattern of abuse and intimidation.”

“A year and a half after the President said he wished to make his immigration policy more humane, his agents are rounding u p mothers and children with the intent of sending them to likely violence and possible death,” she said. “If there is some political calculation behind this as there usually is, it is disgusting.”

Advocates have also argued since the so-called border crisis in the summer of 2014 that most of the immigrants coming here illegally are fleeing violence in their home countries — primarily El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — and should be allowed to seek asylum in the United States.

“The raids may serve a political purpose for the Administration, but it will not deter the flight of refugees from Central America,” said Kevin Appleby, the International Migration Policy Director for the Center for Migration Studies, a Catholic-based institute and think tank. “It only sends vulnerable families back to danger, many of whom did not receive adequate due process protections from our legal system.”

On the surface, it may be difficult to square the circle of the Obama Administration so harshly and publicly carrying out immigration enforcement, however it does achieve multiple optical points: First, and most importantly, it counters the common refrain of opponents and detractors “The Obama Administration cannot be trusted on enforcement of immigration law”. Second, the stark images of mothers and children being dragged out of their homes in the early morning hours in states that are sharply attacking Obama’s “compassionate” Executive Actions could see a noticeable sea change in local public opinion, effectively mobilizing advocacy groups to come out during election season even if the current targets of raids would not have been covered by Obama’s attempted actions.

Lastly, the suspiciously timed administration “leak” just before the New Years holiday weekend actions overshadowed the much more controversial and consequential publishing of a 200-page Executive Action on New Years Eve which has the potential to allow hundreds of thousands of additional guest workers to enter the country.

Immigration hawk Sen. Jeff Sessions has called Obama’s Executive order “brazen, illegal“:

“This lawless action comes at a time when immigration is already at an all-time high.  The total foreign-born population is at record-breaking 42.4 million, having more than quadrupled since immigration caps were raised five decades ago.  Excess labor supply has already helped drive down today’s median household income more than $4,000 beneath levels at the turn of the century,” Sessions stated.

“When it returns to session, Congress will have to decide: will it take meaningful action to block the president’s new incursion, or will it continue making only empty gestures of opposition while acquiescing to the president’s agenda?”Sessions asked. “Voters want immigration growth halted.  The more the governing class ignores these demands the more they lose their authority to govern.”

It is worth noting that the move made on New Years Eve was one of four previously leaked (trial ballooned?) as ambitious plans Obama has in store to radically circumvent Congress to achieve his immigration reform goals in a very broad sense. In fact, it seems to achieve one of the policy goals some warned the Trans-Pacific Partnership would usher in.

[Russia Today] [Politico] [Washington Post] [Washington Free Beacon] [Photo courtesy New York Daily News]

Originally published at The Hill Talk on January 6, 2016.