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| President Obama: deporter-in-chief | President Obama: deporter-in-chief |
| (about 4 hours later) | |
| America is not just a nation of immigrants, it is a nation of illegal immigrants. After all, no one – whether having come over willingly or forcibly – bothered to ask permission from those who lived here first. A byproduct of the massive and bloody land grab that birthed this country is our peculiarly broad notion of American-ness. Because unless you are, in fact, native, nobody – Mexican American, African American, or Irish American – can claim to be "more American" than the next person. It's a legacy of tolerance, born of mutual illegitimacy, of which Americans can be justifiably proud. | America is not just a nation of immigrants, it is a nation of illegal immigrants. After all, no one – whether having come over willingly or forcibly – bothered to ask permission from those who lived here first. A byproduct of the massive and bloody land grab that birthed this country is our peculiarly broad notion of American-ness. Because unless you are, in fact, native, nobody – Mexican American, African American, or Irish American – can claim to be "more American" than the next person. It's a legacy of tolerance, born of mutual illegitimacy, of which Americans can be justifiably proud. |
| President Obama should appreciate this more than most. He was elected twice with overwhelming Latino and Asian American support, capturing over 70% of both groups in 2012. He ran on a platform of comprehensive immigration reform, a promise he has so far been unable to deliver. What he has delivered instead is mass deportations. | President Obama should appreciate this more than most. He was elected twice with overwhelming Latino and Asian American support, capturing over 70% of both groups in 2012. He ran on a platform of comprehensive immigration reform, a promise he has so far been unable to deliver. What he has delivered instead is mass deportations. |
| Under Obama, the US has deported over 1.5 million people, a historic record. At the current rate of 400,000 per year, Obama will take just over 6 years to surpass the 2 million deportations Bush achieved in 8. This is despite the fact that illegal immigration has been dropping steadily for years, ever since the recession made America a much less attractive destination. | Under Obama, the US has deported over 1.5 million people, a historic record. At the current rate of 400,000 per year, Obama will take just over 6 years to surpass the 2 million deportations Bush achieved in 8. This is despite the fact that illegal immigration has been dropping steadily for years, ever since the recession made America a much less attractive destination. |
| This contradiction received media attention this week, when Obama's own uncle was spared deportation by a Boston immigration court. It also came into sharper focus the week before, when Obama was heckled on what should have been home turf, devoutly Democratic San Francisco. Ju Hong, a 24 year old Korean American Harvard researcher and undocumented immigrant (his parents had brought him to the US when he was 11 and overstayed their visa), interrupted Obama minutes into a speech, shouting: | This contradiction received media attention this week, when Obama's own uncle was spared deportation by a Boston immigration court. It also came into sharper focus the week before, when Obama was heckled on what should have been home turf, devoutly Democratic San Francisco. Ju Hong, a 24 year old Korean American Harvard researcher and undocumented immigrant (his parents had brought him to the US when he was 11 and overstayed their visa), interrupted Obama minutes into a speech, shouting: |
| There are thousands of families being deported. Please use your executive order to halt the deportations of all 11.5 million immigrants. You have the power to stop the deportations for all undocumented immigrants. | There are thousands of families being deported. Please use your executive order to halt the deportations of all 11.5 million immigrants. You have the power to stop the deportations for all undocumented immigrants. |
| Obama engaged Hong, but did so by passing the buck, replying: | Obama engaged Hong, but did so by passing the buck, replying: |
| Actually, I don't. If in fact I could pass all these laws without Congress, I would do so. But we're also a nation of laws, that's part of our tradition. | Actually, I don't. If in fact I could pass all these laws without Congress, I would do so. But we're also a nation of laws, that's part of our tradition. |
| It was, in a narrow sense, true: Congress passes laws and the president carries them out. It was, in a broader sense, duplicitous. Obama may not be able to ignore immigration law, but he has plenty of executive discretion over how to enforce it. And how he has exercised this power, or chosen not to, explains a lot more about why deportations have mysteriously hit record levels than Obama is willing to admit. | It was, in a narrow sense, true: Congress passes laws and the president carries them out. It was, in a broader sense, duplicitous. Obama may not be able to ignore immigration law, but he has plenty of executive discretion over how to enforce it. And how he has exercised this power, or chosen not to, explains a lot more about why deportations have mysteriously hit record levels than Obama is willing to admit. |
| Administration officials would have us believe deportations are simply rising with Congressional allocations to law enforcement agencies. But like every president, Obama sets enforcement priorities – most famously with his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) policy, which suspends deportation proceedings for those undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children. | Administration officials would have us believe deportations are simply rising with Congressional allocations to law enforcement agencies. But like every president, Obama sets enforcement priorities – most famously with his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) policy, which suspends deportation proceedings for those undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children. |
| Obama has shifted away from Bush's preferred tactic of workplace raids to a supposedly smarter strategy that targets criminals and "egregious" violators, ie those who have come back after being deported multiple times. But to call this "smart" is a stretch. Another Obama innovation is Secure Communities, a program that feeds records from local police arrests into federal immigration databases, setting undocumented arrestees on a fast track for deportation even if they are never convicted of any crime. | Obama has shifted away from Bush's preferred tactic of workplace raids to a supposedly smarter strategy that targets criminals and "egregious" violators, ie those who have come back after being deported multiple times. But to call this "smart" is a stretch. Another Obama innovation is Secure Communities, a program that feeds records from local police arrests into federal immigration databases, setting undocumented arrestees on a fast track for deportation even if they are never convicted of any crime. |
| The 2012 election debates saw Obama bragging about going after "criminals, gangbangers, people hurting the community", a grotesque distortion of his immigration record that escaped mockery only thanks to Romney's idiotic ideas about "self-deportation". One analysis of deportation records found that only 14% of those deported in 2012 had a criminal record – ie not just an immigration violation, a civil matter – and just 4% were aggravated felons (a category that would cover, for example, the non-remunerative transfer of a single ecstasy pill). Presumably one of these "gangbangers" is Carmen Ortega (pdf), a 62-year-old grandmother of 14 with Alzheimer's who has been ordered deported to the Dominican Republic, a country where she has no remaining family, after living in the US for 40 years. Her charge? "Possession of a controlled substance." | The 2012 election debates saw Obama bragging about going after "criminals, gangbangers, people hurting the community", a grotesque distortion of his immigration record that escaped mockery only thanks to Romney's idiotic ideas about "self-deportation". One analysis of deportation records found that only 14% of those deported in 2012 had a criminal record – ie not just an immigration violation, a civil matter – and just 4% were aggravated felons (a category that would cover, for example, the non-remunerative transfer of a single ecstasy pill). Presumably one of these "gangbangers" is Carmen Ortega (pdf), a 62-year-old grandmother of 14 with Alzheimer's who has been ordered deported to the Dominican Republic, a country where she has no remaining family, after living in the US for 40 years. Her charge? "Possession of a controlled substance." |
| This evidence suggests the Obama administration isn't following its own, supposedly targeted and humane enforcement strategies. It may be that the administration has lost control over the bloated post-9/11 national security state: There's a growing sense that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) is a rogue agency, with the Ice employees' union having even sued the administration in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn Daca. Most likely though, the deportations are political maneuvering: an attempt by Obama to sell Republicans on immigration reform by acting tough, though this does more to break up families than keep communities secure. | This evidence suggests the Obama administration isn't following its own, supposedly targeted and humane enforcement strategies. It may be that the administration has lost control over the bloated post-9/11 national security state: There's a growing sense that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) is a rogue agency, with the Ice employees' union having even sued the administration in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn Daca. Most likely though, the deportations are political maneuvering: an attempt by Obama to sell Republicans on immigration reform by acting tough, though this does more to break up families than keep communities secure. |
| It's the same political calculus that makes beefing up border security a necessary component of any grand compromise on immigration, producing little apart from wasteful boondoggles that are as unnecessary – Mexican net migration to the US has dropped to zero – as they are ineffective at keeping out either people or drugs. One DEA agent recounted in the New York Times how Mexican cartels responded to a multi-million dollar border fence built in Arizona by constructing a catapult to toss bales of marijuana over it. He repeated: | |
| A catapult. We've got the best fence money can buy, and they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology. | A catapult. We've got the best fence money can buy, and they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology. |
| The problem with this sweeten the pot strategy is it's about as likely to work as border fences. House Speaker John Boehner has made it clear he will not bring the Senate's immigration bill before the House for a vote. No matter how many Dominican grandmothers Obama deports, he will never win over a Republican House that would rather shut down the government than cooperate in any way with the White House. | The problem with this sweeten the pot strategy is it's about as likely to work as border fences. House Speaker John Boehner has made it clear he will not bring the Senate's immigration bill before the House for a vote. No matter how many Dominican grandmothers Obama deports, he will never win over a Republican House that would rather shut down the government than cooperate in any way with the White House. |
| So with immigration reform off the table, the only measures left are executive: redirecting resources to prosecutorial discretion and Alternatives to Detention (pdf) programs, ending Secure Communities, granting more temporary work permits, cracking down on Ice, and stopping prosecutors from pursuing absurd cases, among others. Either Obama is unaware of the authority he has, or he's unwilling to use it. Though as a former constitutional law professor, he can't plead ignorance. | So with immigration reform off the table, the only measures left are executive: redirecting resources to prosecutorial discretion and Alternatives to Detention (pdf) programs, ending Secure Communities, granting more temporary work permits, cracking down on Ice, and stopping prosecutors from pursuing absurd cases, among others. Either Obama is unaware of the authority he has, or he's unwilling to use it. Though as a former constitutional law professor, he can't plead ignorance. |
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