Immigration Protests Heat Up, White House Ducks and Covers: When Will Congress Pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform?

 
As Bill Hing on ImmigrationProf and Julia Preston reported yesterday, vocal protests over Secure Communities are heating up.

Preston reported that SComm "is central to President Obama’s immigration enforcement strategy [and] has drawn protests by Latino and immigrant organizations in six cities in the last two days, as those groups stepped up their confrontation with the administration over the fast pace of deportations."

As Julianne Hing has observed, the White House appears nothing less than deaf to the protests and the cries for justice. Ignoring the fact that the many of the so-called criminal violators are guilty of petty crimes and are not a public safety risk, Cecilia Muñoz, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House, who should know better, states on a post on a White House blog that

"The Secure Communities Program is a powerful tool to keep the government’s immigration enforcement resources focused where they belong – on those who fit within DHS’s highest enforcement priorities, such as those who have committed crimes in the United States."

When will the Obama administration recognize that efforts to facilitate mass deportations, separating families, destroying communities, and making people live in terror, is not acceptable -- especially without any meaningful efforts to bring forward comprehensive immigration reform that allows for more legal immigration, provides a path to legalization, etc.?

Some activists claim that President Obama is worse on immigration than President Bush. It is true that the administration''s "enforcement now, enforcement forever" strategy has resulted in record levels of deportations, breaking the records of the Bush administration. Readers can judge for themselves.

KJ