Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia: Ending Deportation Priorities Breaks Away from Decades of History and Sound Policy
For Immigration Impact, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia analyzes the Trump administration's immigration removal priorities as described in a recent story in ProPublica that revealed an internal February 2017 memorandum authored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to its employees about the implementation of recent Executive Orders on immigration enforcement. The memo is stunning in its declaration: “effective immediately, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers will take enforcement action against all removable [immigrants] encountered in the course of their duties.”
Professor Wadhia finds
"[t]he language is extreme on legal, economic, and humanitarian levels. First, by forcing line officers to make every person without status a priority, the agency is violating its responsibility to faithfully execute the laws and set priorities. Second, by making no distinction between the busboys who clear the tables and those who pose an actual threat to national security, the memo enables limited immigration resources to be wasted on people who live and thrive in our communities. Finally, the humanitarian crisis caused by deporting moms and restaurant workers has already been felt and should it continue, will only separate more families and challenge our nation’s moral identity and standing.
The leaked February memo is stunning but also unsurprising. Throughout President Donald Trump’s campaign and later in documents published by the White House and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), increased immigration enforcement and deportations have been the headline."
KJ
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2017/07/shoba-sivaprasad-wadhia-ending-deportation-priorities-breaks-away-from-decades-of-history-and-sound-.html
