President Obama has made it clear that he intends to use his executive power to implement a policy that would dramatically reduce the amount of people deported. Those who are convicted of felonies would still be removed from the United States. The President previously did this with implementing DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and by instructing immigration prosecutors to use prosecutorial discretion in removal proceedings. More recently, the Obama administration issued a policy that parents of minor United States citizen children would not be a removal priority for immigration enforcement agents.
The problem with these policies is that when filtered down to the actual enforcement agents, they do not accomplish what the President must have intended. For example, immigrants with minor offenses or misdemeanors are being detained and deported when the policy was clearly intended to remove serious criminal offenders.
The President has delayed the implementation of the full scale immigration policy to give Congress a chance to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Currently, under the Obama administration, more than 1,000 immigrants are being deported every day. So while President Obama gives Congress a chance, families and lives are being torn apart every day at the rate of over 1,000 daily.
The sad part is that the immigration issue is so politicized that individual’s lives are being adversely affected because one party doesn’t want to give in to the other party. There is a lack of our representatives putting aside party politics for the common good.
Something will break after this summer. It remains to be seen who, if anyone, will come to the rescue of immigrant families.