 |
WASHINGTON POST
The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to reinstate an effort by President Obama to provide relief from deportation to millions of undocumented immigrants.
The Obama administration has sought to offer some undocumented immigrants a guarantee that they would be allowed to stay in the United States temporarily. The president has done so in two stages. In 2012, he allowed undocumented immigrants brought to the United States at a young age to apply for a temporary reprieve from deportation. Then, in 2014, he expanded on the policy by including older undocumented immigrants who had come as children, as well as the undocumented parents of U.S. citizens.
With their victory in court, Republicans have now successfully stymied the second of those expansions. They view Obama's policy overall as a kind of amnesty that the president does not have the authority to grant.
Yet their victory was not as complete as it might have been if not for Antonin Scalia's death earlier this year. His passing left the court with four liberal and four conservative justices, who were divided evenly on the decision. The deadlock upheld the decisions of lower courts that ruled against Obama but rendered the Supreme Court unable to establish a decisive precedent for future cases.
The plan Obama put forward in 2014 would have offered relief to two broad categories of undocumented immigrants.
-----
The decision Thursday effectively takes the bulk of Obama's immigration agenda off the table for the rest of his presidency. The implications for the future are unclear, however. Since the case ended in a deadlock, with the justices on the court evenly divided, the decision will not have the force of precedent as cases that are decided by a majority. As is customary in such cases, the court was constrained to issuing an opinion of just a single sentence, with no discussion of the fundamental legal issues.
The rulings in the case so far have been preliminary, and the parties will next argue the merits in district court. If Hillary Clinton wins the presidential election in November, her lawyers would presumably continue contesting the issue, or she could put a similar plan of her own forward. After appointing a more liberal justice to the Supreme Court to replace Scalia, she might receive a more favorable ruling once the court is restored to its full complement of justices.
Read more at the WASHINGTON POST
 |
| The government says its top priorities for deportation include foreigners who pose a threat to national security or public safety. John Moore/Getty Images |
But Low-Priority Immigrants Are Still Swept Up in Net of Deportation.
The president said immigrants who might have qualified for the programs would still be safe from deportation.
Still, deportations continue, thousands every week.
Three agents knocked on the door of a modest duplex in a Wisconsin town just after dawn. The Mexican immigrant living on the ground floor stuck his head out.
They asked his name and he gave it. Within minutes José Cervantes Amaral was in handcuffs as his wife, also from Mexico, silently watched. After 18 years working and living quietly in the United States, Mr. Cervantes, who did not have legal papers, rode away in the back seat, heading for deportation.
 |
After Thursday’s Supreme Court decision, the president’s protections are gone, but the enforcement plan remains in effect.
Last year, immigration authorities deported 235,413 people, according to official figures. Of those, 59 percent were convicted criminals, and 98 percent fit within the administration’s priorities, Department of Homeland Security officials said. The top priority includes foreigners who pose a threat to national or border security or to public safety. Other priorities are for people with serious criminal records, but they also include any migrant caught entering the country illegally after Jan. 1, 2014.
Homeland Security officials said Friday that the Supreme Court decision would have no effect on the pace or strategy of enforcement.
“Our limited enforcement resources will not be focused on the removal of those who have committed no serious crimes, have been in this country for years and have families here,” said Marsha Catron, a spokeswoman for the department. “Under this policy, these people are not priorities for removal, nor should they be.”
Mr. Obama has carried out many more deportations than previous presidents, setting a record of more than 2.4 million formal removals.
But Republican lawmakers point to a sharp decrease in deportations — down 43 percent in 2015 from 409,849 in 2012 — to say that Mr. Obama has all but stopped enforcing immigration law. “When will the Obama administration end its reckless policies that wreak havoc on our communities?” asked Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
But what is not enough enforcement for some is too much for others.
“By focusing our resources on the most egregious offenders,” Mr. Ricardo Wong, the director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, agency office in Chicago, said, “we ensure the very best use of our resources while immediately improving public safety.”
One of those arrested was Mr. Cervantes.
In 2006, Mr. Cervantes said in an interview by telephone on Friday, he was caught up in an immigration raid at a factory near his workplace. Local police who assisted in the raid arrested him, finding — mistakenly, he says — that he was working with documents under a false name.
Mr. Cervantes, a construction worker, pleaded guilty to a minor identity theft offense. A decade later, after he and his wife raised two daughters in Genoa City, Wis., immigration agents came to his door to deport him.
“The shock for my wife was very strong,” Mr. Cervantes said. She has been in treatment at local hospitals for kidney cancer, he said. “If we have to go back to Mexico, I won’t have her for long.”
He has been released while he fights his immigration case.
“The administration is continuing to deport people who should not be a priority,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, an organization that assisted Mr. Cervantes. Mr. Obama, she said, “can do much more to prevent the unnecessary breakup of families.”
Some clearly are in the priority group. On Friday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it had arrested 45 foreigners who had been listed by Interpol as wanted for serious crimes, including three men from El Salvador sought in connection with gang killings. Immigration agents have conducted many roundups of drug traffickers and human smugglers.
Read more at the NY TIMES