Immigration Advocates Offer Guarded Response to Obama Admin’s New Deportation Policy

In response to the Obama Administration’s new deportation policy announced last week, immigration advocates are celebrating cautiously while still pushing for comprehensive immigration reform and the end of the Secure Communities program. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) designed SCOMM in 2008 to help pursue the deportation of immigrants convicted of high-level felonies, but the program promotes racial profiling and has not adequately addressed local communities’ concerns about violent felons and fugitives.

Here’s a roundup of some responses:

Let’s make a toast, but don’t drink yet
Organizing Upgrade

Thursday felt like time for a toast for America’s largest social movement, the folks fighting for immigrant rights. With the news that the Obama administration would review many of its pending 300,000 deportation cases and allow some of those with no “criminal” record to stay, you could literally hear the cries of joy jumping out of Facebook updates, twitter feeds, cafecito spots (I live in Miami), college campuses, and even a detention center or two.

After over two years of pressuring the Obama administration to use its executive power to stop tearing apart immigrant families and communities; after hunger strikes, 1000 mile walks, and mass arrests, after multiple insistences from the Administration that it didn’t have that authority, after multiple cover-ups by the administration of how many people they were deporting that had done nothing wrong, it seems like the Administration is finally listening. And while there are tears of joy, and sighs of relief, there is also plenty of healthy skepticism.

U.S. Issues New Deportation Policy’s First Reprieves
By Julia Preston, New York Times

In particular, officials will look to halt deportations of longtime residents with clean police records who came here illegally when they were children, or are close family of military service members, or are parents or spouses of American citizens.

“This is a great first step,” said Hector E. Sanchez, a Hispanic labor leader who oversees immigration policy for the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, a coalition of the country’s major Latino groups. “We really need to see action on a common-sense approach to immigration and not just promises.”

Obama’s 3 Percent Solution To The Immigration Crisis Will Not Sway Latino Voters
Huffington Post “Latino Voices” opinion by Roberto Lovato, co-founder of Presente.org

While there will be a temporary jolt of excitement amidst the confusion and diversionary euphoria of Thursday’s announcement, Latino voters are no longer apt to forget President Obama’s failure to fundamentally alter or abolish devastating immigration policies like the SCOMM program, which was the impetus for our recent national day of action. In this sense, the Obama Administration’s announcement represents a (Less Than) 3% Solution to the crisis that his administration has caused in the lives of the more than 1 million immigrants he has already deported, the majority of whom have committed no crime but that of seeking a better life for them and their families.

Administration Announcement Falls Short
Statement by Chris Newman, Legal Director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network

“In order to fulfill its promises, the Obama administration must end policies like Secure Communities that result in the criminalization of innocent immigrants who are Americans in Waiting like those who came before them. To date, the administration has pursued policies that are sowing fear and devastation among immigrant communities, and it must reverse course to stop the Arizonification of the country.”