White House Open to Different Tacks on Deportation Fix

Wall Street Journal

By Jeffrey Sparshott

July 14, 2014

White House Open to Different Tacks on Deportation Fix

The Obama administration, trying to walk a fine political line amid a sharp increase in the number of children entering the country, on Monday said it is open to different approaches that will grant it more authority to deport illegal immigrants.

President Barack Obama earlier this month asked Congress to give the Department of Homeland Security more discretion as it processes children arriving at the southwest border. Under a 2008 law, children who aren’t from Mexico and Canada must be placed with sponsors in the U.S. while waiting for a court to hear their deportation cases, a process that can take years.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Monday said changes to current rules would allow DHS to more quickly repatriate individuals who don’t have a legal basis to remain in the country. “Whether it means rewriting the 2008 law or just writing a new law that would give greater authority and discretion to the secretary of homeland security, the details in this are important, but either of those approaches could work if they are tailored with this goal in mind,” he said.

The White House is under political pressure as it looks to cope with a surge of children—many from troubled Central American nations—arriving at the southwest border. Last week Mr. Obama asked for $3.7 billion in emergency funds to beef up security, shore up courts and take other steps to counter the influx.

Separately, a rule change would allow faster deportations, though lawmakers remain divided and prospects for a quick fix appear dim.

Republican lawmakers last week backed a change in the law, calling it one way to help address the crisis along the border.

But many Democrats have expressed concern that children could be sent home to violent neighborhoods. ”We are not a country that should turn children away and send them back to certain death,” Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said last week.

Mr. Earnest tried to give weight to both sides. The White House is wants to “balance these competing equities, which is to meet the basic humanitarian needs of the individuals who are apprehended along the border, to ensure that they receive the due process to which they’re entitled but also to enforce the law as efficiently as possible,” he said.

More than 52,000 unaccompanied minors crossed the border into the U.S. during the first nine months of the fiscal year that began in October.

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