New York Times
By Julia Preston
August 22, 2013
Young immigrants in the country illegally have escalated their protests against deportations this week, creating awkward dilemmas for Obama administration officials who are pressing the House of Representatives to pass broad immigration legislation this fall.
With leaders in the House saying they could take up several immigration bills, the administration is walking a fine line. They want to avoid arrests or deportations of advocates that could create a confrontation between the White House and groups mobilizing support for overhaul legislation that Mr. Obama supports. But officials are also trying to persuade skeptical Republicans that the administration is vigorously enforcing immigration law.
In Phoenix on Wednesday, dozens of protesters marched around a federal immigration detention center and four of them chained themselves to the fence outside. Several protesters sat down in a roadway to block a bus taking immigrants out of the center, apparently on the way to deportation. Many demonstrators were young people who called themselves Dreamers, immigrants without legal papers who came here as children.
Six people were arrested and charged with trespassing, disobeying a federal officer and other misdemeanors, officials said, but all were freed. No immigration proceedings were opened.
Organizers said they wanted to highlight continuing deportations under Mr. Obama, even as the president has championed legislation that would provide legal status and eventual citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.
“Our families are tired of being separated, and we want Congress to stop the deportations and give us a path to citizenship,” said Jhannyn Rivera, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Dream Act Coalition, one of the groups that staged the protest.
In July, nine young immigrants from Mexico tried to enter the country through a border station in Nogales, Ariz., without legal visas, by presenting claims for political asylum. After they were detained for two weeks, all nine were released and their asylum cases were allowed to go forward in immigration courts.
The militant tactics by young immigrants “are not a welcome development for the administration at a time when it is trying to persuade Congress that immigration enforcement is under control,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a policy expert at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.
Homeland Security Department officials at first said it would be difficult to allow the nine immigrants, now known as the Dream Nine, to be released from detention. But their protest quickly became national news. After interviewing the immigrants, the authorities decided they had met the first test for asylum, showing they had a “credible fear” that they could face danger or persecution if they returned to Mexico.
They were placed in deportation but will remain free while their cases make their way through the immigration courts, said their lawyer, Margo Cowan. In the overburdened courts, asylum decisions often take years.
The administration’s action in those cases provoked the ire of House Republicans, drawing attention to a broader policy that has led to large increases in the numbers of migrants gaining entry by requesting asylum at the southwest border.
In a letter on Wednesday to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia, cited official figures showing that 23,408 foreigners had come to the southwest border requesting asylum in the past nine months, up from 5,222 in all of 2009. Border authorities allowed 92 percent of those foreigners to remain in the country and pursue their claims.
Mr. Goodlatte said it appeared the administration was allowing migrants “to game the system by getting a free pass” into the United States. Homeland Security Department officials said 91 percent of asylum requests by Mexicans were ultimately denied.
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