Obama’s broken immigration promise – Salon

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The Obama administration claims that it is deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants while focusing on those with criminal records. But new data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows that the number of deportation orders has declined dramatically since last summer and non-criminals comprise a growing percentage of those expelled from the country. That wasn’t supposed to happen under a policy of “prosecutorial discretion” announced by ICE director John Morton last June. The goal of the policy, patient announced with much fanfare in the Spanish language media, was to spare “longtime lawful residents” from deportation and to focus on criminals. Since then, the adminstration has deported many fewer non-criminal aliens. But non-criminals remain the vast majority of those deported. And those with no criminal record now actually comprise a slightly larger percentage of those forced to leave the country than they did before Morton’s announcement.

Feds Use Counter-Terrorism Laws to Fuel Deportation Machine

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Jose Barahona says that he would have been killed had he refused to open his door when the armed guerillas occupying his town demanded he let them use his kitchen and sleep on his floor. He says that’s what happened to his father. Dead. And he says it was because of the fear of death during the war raging between the FMLN guerillas and the Salvadoran government that at the age of 24, with his new wife and baby boy, he left his Salvadoran mountain village and came to the United States where the couple would have two more children and where he’d spend the next two and half decades. He thought he’d left all the violence behind. Twenty six years after that departure, on March 22nd 2011, now 51-year-old Barahona was shuttled from a Virginia immigration detention center to an immigration court

Obama’s Broken 2008 Immigration Promises Create Dilemma For Democrats

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Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), one of President Barack Obama’s most vocal critics on immigration, was sitting at dinner with his family a couple of weeks ago when his youngest daughter began talking about the president’s “terrible” deportation record. “If they invite us to the White House, I won’t go,” the 24-year-old said, according to Gutierrez. His wife, though, summed up the family’s mixed feelings on the president and immigration. “Yes — but you should clarify that notwithstanding that, we’re all voting for him,” his wife said, according to the congressman. “We can be angry, but we cannot vote for” Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee. To many supporters of immigration reform, Obama has been a major disappointment.

Mayoral Candidates Oppose Fingerprinting Program – NYTimes.com

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The expected Democratic candidates for mayor may have their differences, there but they are unified in their opposition to New York City’s participation in Se Communities, there a controversial fingerprinting program meant to identify illegal immigrants. Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials announced that they planned to extend the program across New York and Massachusetts on Tuesday, despite opposition from the governors of both states. The program requires the fingerprints of anyone arrested by the local or state police to be checked against databases of the Department of Homeland Security, which include immigration violations. If someone is found to be in the country illegally, immigration officials may ask the police to hold the person to be picked up by federal agents.

Mere Tinkering With a Bad Program, S-Comm – NYTimes

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The Obama administration announced last month plans to repair Se Communities, the program that compels state and local police to join its wide and expanding hunt for illegal immigrants. From now on, when illegal immigrants are stopped for traffic violations by local police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will consider detaining and deporting them only after they have been convicted, not before. In theory, this minor policy shift could reduce the number of people arrested on a pretext and held for deportation. But that’s unlikely. And it doesn’t fix the fundamental flaws in a discredited program. The administration has faced fierce criticism from law-enforcement officials and immigrant advocates for ensnaring far too many minor offenders and noncriminals as it has rapidly expanded Se Communities and ramped up deportations to a record pace of 400,000 a year. It contends that most are criminals, though that still includes many minor offenders.

Demandan resolver brutal asesinato de Anastasio Hernández – eldiariony.com

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El Gobierno de EE.UU. mantendrá en pie el polémico programa federal ‘Comunidades Seguras’, con pequeñas modificaciones que, en su conjunto, no remediarán por completo la detención y deportación de indocumentados por infracciones de tránsito. En respuesta a las reformas que recomendó en septiembre de 2011 un Grupo de Trabajo sobre el programa federal, el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS) anunció el viernes pasado que hará menos énfasis en la detención de indocumentados que hayan cometido infracciones de tránsito menores, como conducir sin la debida licencia. Pero la recomendación clave del Grupo de Trabajo, que realizó consultas en todo Estados Unidos, era que las autoridades federales evitasen por completo la deportación por esas infracciones.