Commentary:
By Anthony D. Romero
By now you’ve all heard that President Obama has deported two million human beings since taking office in 2009-more than his predecessor, President Bush, did during his entire eight years in the White House.
Two million deportations is an astonishing number that represents unimaginable human suffering. Rightly, allies have become adversaries, with National Council of La Raza President Janet Murgia labeling President Obama as “the deporter-in-chief.” The criticisms have become so white-hot that the President recently asked Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to review the Administration’s deportation priorities and policies with the goal of implementing them more humanely.
What Johnson should discover during his review is that President Obama already has the authority to curb his record-level pace of deportations and to help fix America’s disastrous immigration system by doing the following four things:
First, the president should instruct the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to prioritize only the deportation of individuals convicted of serious violent offenses in recent years. According to DHS’s own fiscal year (FY) 2013 data, 67 percent of the 368,644 people deported have either no criminal history or have only been convicted of minor misdemeanors. Even this figure is misleading, as those with criminal histories include individuals convicted of low-level crimes, such as offenses based on immigration status like driving without a license. No one should be ripped away from their families and communities because of a traffic offense.
Second, the president should instruct DHS to cease asking state or local police to detain peaceful immigrants. Under Secure Communities and other DHS programs, state and local police submit fingerprint scans of anyone arrested to DHS.
The scans are then run through a database to identify people without immigration status. If there’s a “match,” DHS can issue an immigration hold, asking state or local police to detain (often at their own expense) a person for 48 hours — but in practice can be much longer — until the individual can be transferred into DHS custody for deportation. In FY 2007, DHS issued roughly 80,000 of these holds; in 2012, this number jumped to over 270,000. Too often, mistakes are made, with U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, often of Latino descent, improperly detained by policies that invite racial profiling.
Third, no one should be deported without seeing an immigration judge. Judicial hearings ensure a judge can consider the impact a deportation will have on the individual’s family or loved ones as well as other mitigating circumstances. In fiscal year 2013, over 260,000 people were denied due process and deported without ever seeing a judge, nearly twice as many as in 2005.
In addition to implementing these reforms, President Obama should provide deportation relief and work authorization to people who have lived in the U.S. for five years and do not pose a current serious threat to the public.
Instituting these changes would go a long way to curbing record-level deportations, keeping families together, protecting American communities, and safeguarding civil liberties. The president already has the power to reverse his failed immigration and border security policies.
Now he just needs the political will and moral courage.
Anthony D. Romero is the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. For more information on the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, please visit https://www.aclu.org/immigrants-rights. He can be reached at aromero@aclu.org