International Business Times
By Laura Matthews
April 8, 2014
Immigration-reform
advocates are feeling vindicated by a New York Times report on Sunday
revealing that a majority of undocumented immigrants deported by the
Obama administration
were not high-risk criminals but at most minor offenders. And they are
using that story as the basis for a renewed effort to get the
administration to slow the pace of deportations.
The
record level of deportations -- under President Obama, 2 million people
have been deported -- is the most contentious part of the currently
stalled immigration reform
debate. Lawmakers and activists have been asking for administrative
relief for those who would qualify for legal status should Congress pass
the immigration bill approved last year by the Senate. They argue that
too many families are being broken apart and
breadwinners deported over minor infractions.
Veronica
Dahlberg, executive director at HOLA Ohio, a grassroots Latino
organization in northeast Ohio, said she has for years seen immigrants
who should be low on the
administration’s radar swept up in dragnets and channeled through the
deportation system for things like a simple traffic violation.
“It’s
finally shedding a light on what is really happening versus what the
administration says is happening,” Dahlberg said during a conference
hosted by pro-reform group
America’s Voice. The White House says deportations target serious
offenders.
Only
20 percent of the deportation cases under President Barack Obama, or
fewer than 400,000 people, were convicted of serious crimes, the Times’
analysis of administration
records show. But the Times analysis isn’t the only one offering some
vindication to activists’ on-the-ground observations.
The
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse
University also analyzed millions of deportation records since the
launch of Secure Communities, a controversial
program that formally began in 2008 to rid communities across America
of criminal aliens who pose a public safety threat. TRAC found that in
fiscal year 2013, only 12 percent of all deportees had serious “Level 1”
offenses, which by the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) agency’s definition includes acts such homicide,
kidnapping and sexual assault. The most serious convictions for
approximately half the deportees were immigration and traffic
violations.
“It’s
so sad and incredible that all these things are happening,” said Monica
Garcia, regional coordinator for Border Network for Human Rights in Las
Cruces, N.M. “Deportation
under Obama is just very sad.”
Garcia
said she is not opposed to law enforcement doing their job, but she
wants them to follow the discretion principles under the current law and
prioritize cases of
serious offenders.
“Our community is still in fear,” she said. “We feel insecure. We feel persecuted instead of being protected.”
Even legal experts are concerned about the revelations of these independent analyses of administration data.
“Those
of us on the ground here, now we know we’re not crazy,” said David
Leopold, an immigration attorney in Cleveland and the past president of
American Immigration
Lawyers Association.
He,
too, clarified that highlighting the cases of immigrants deported for
minor violations isn’t a call not to enforce the law but rather to do so
“with common sense.”
From a legal perspective, said Leopold, the Obama administration now
needs to insist that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement strictly
follow policy guidelines.
“It’s not being followed in the field, and the numbers corroborate [that],” Leopold said.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment