New York Times
By Julia Preston
July 23, 2015
Under
new immigration enforcement programs the Obama administration is
putting in place across the country, the vast majority of unauthorized
immigrants — up to 87 percent
— would not be the focus of deportation operations and would have “a
degree of protection” to remain in the United States, according to a
report published Thursday by the Migration Policy Institute, a
nonpartisan research group in Washington.
The
report found that about 13 percent of an estimated 11 million
immigrants without papers, or about 1.4 million people, have criminal
records or recently crossed the
border illegally, making them priorities for deportation under
guidelines the administration announced in November and put into effect
July 1.
The
new program is likely to result in a drop in overall deportations from
inside the country by as much as 25,000 a year, the report finds, but an
increase in deportations
of immigrants who were convicted of serious crimes, pose national
security threats or were caught crossing the border illegally.
The
findings come as federal and local immigration enforcement policies are
under intense scrutiny after the killing on July 1 of Kathryn Steinle,
who was fatally shot
on a pier in San Francisco by a Mexican immigrant with a long record of
felony convictions and deportations. The immigrant, Juan Francisco
Lopez-Sanchez, was released by the sheriff in San Francisco, a
self-declared sanctuary city, without federal agents being
notified.
Although
the Migration Policy Institute is not an advocacy organization, its
research has lent support to measures granting legal status to
unauthorized immigrants. Its
report is based on data from the Department of Homeland Security and
the Census Bureau, among other sources.
Administration
officials said they started the new programs to improve cooperation
with the more than 300 cities like San Francisco that passed laws
limiting cooperation
with federal authorities, saying the authorities were sweeping up
long-settled immigrants with no criminal records and families in this
country. Homeland Security officials said they had shut down a previous
program, known as Secure Communities, because federal
courts ruled that its requests to local police departments to detain
immigrants were unconstitutional.
Although
its replacement, the Priority Enforcement Program, has been active for
only a few weeks, Republican lawmakers have already said it is
undermining agents’ ability
to enforce immigration laws. The new programs “have turned the flight
from enforcement into a headlong rush,” said Representative Robert W.
Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia, the chairman of the House Judiciary
Committee.
Republicans
in the House and the Senate, as well as Senator Dianne Feinstein, a
California Democrat, are working on bills to compel closer cooperation
between federal
and local authorities.
The
Migration Policy Institute’s estimates may hearten immigrant advocates,
who have pressed the administration to give some protection to
unauthorized immigrants since
legislation offering them legal status died in Congress last year.
The
report focuses on programs that were part of a broad package President
Obama announced in November. The most high-profile of those initiatives,
which would have given
deportation deferrals and work permits to as many as five million
unauthorized immigrants, were challenged by 26 states and have been
halted by federal courts.
But
at the same time, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued new
guidelines focusing enforcement agents on three deportation priorities,
with the top one including
national security threats, gang members, convicted felons and recent
border crossers. The other priorities include repeat offenders with
lesser crimes and people who entered the United States illegally or were
ordered deported after Jan. 1, 2014.
Under
the Priority Enforcement Program, federal agents will generally ask the
police to notify them only if an immigrant fitting the new priorities
was about to be released.
In limited cases, agents can ask the police to detain an immigrant for
48 hours but only if they provide probable cause.
“The
new priorities focus more precisely and narrowly on people convicted of
crimes and public safety threats,” said Marc R. Rosenblum, the
institute’s deputy director
of the United States immigration policy program. If the new federal
programs are carried out as planned, Mr. Rosenblum said, “immigrants who
have long been living in the U.S. and are not committing crimes will
receive a degree of protection and likely will
not be facing deportation.”
According
to the report’s estimates, those who would be priorities for
enforcement agents include about 690,000 unauthorized immigrants who
have been convicted of a felony
or serious misdemeanor; about 640,000 who entered the country illegally
since Jan. 1, 2014; and about 60,000 fugitives who failed to comply
with a deportation order from an immigration court.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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