Leniency isn’t automatic under new deportation policy
Photo by John Moore/Getty Images
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer prepares an undocumented Salvadoran immigrant for a deportation flight bound for San Salvador in Mesa, Arizona, December 2010
It’s been more than a month since the Obama administration announced a major shift in its deportation policy, with Department of Homeland Security officials saying that the cases of some 300,000 undocumented immigrants currently in deportation proceedings would be reviewed to identify those deemed a low priority for removal.
According to the guidelines outlined in an earlier federal memo, among these were young people living in the United States since they were children, immigrant military members and their families, and more generally, in keeping with the administration’s stated focus on deporting criminals, people who were otherwise law-abiding and had no offense record.
But as evidenced by a series of recent near-deportation cases that have made the news, the guidelines aren’t being applied automatically as they trickle down through layers of immigration enforcement officials, and sometimes the contractors who work for them. The “left hand isn’t aware of what the right hand is doing,” an immigration attorney handling the case of one young woman in deportation proceedings recently said to the Texas Tribune.
Some people who qualify for leniency have obtained reprieves from the federal government, sometimes in the nick of time as they are scheduled to depart. Often it’s been thanks to petition drives and social media campaigns launched on their behalf by a network of supporters. Those who benefit from this have tended to be young people who grew up in the United States, speak English and understand the system, and are better connected than newcomers.
But even some of these young immigrants have had close calls. One undocumented former student, 25-year-old activist Matias Ramos, recently wrote about his experience earlier this month, when employees of a federal contractor came to his home and outfitted him with an electronic monitoring device in preparation for his impending deportation to Argentina.
On September 13, less than a month after President Barack Obama announced this new initiative, and a dozen years after I arrived in the United States, I was placed on a supervision-intensive program run by a private company called BI Inc.
Under this program, a BI goon shackled me with a GPS-enabled monitoring device on my ankle that I’d have to wear at all times, even in the shower. Another called me a week later, telling me I should buy a plane ticket in two weeks. BI agents were free to make unannounced visits to my home, and my girlfriend and I had no right to refuse them entry. Nor was I allowed to leave the Washington, DC area.
Thanks to a petition drive by friends, colleagues, and supporters, ICE eventually relented and had the shackle removed. But thousands of other undocumented immigrants aren’t so lucky.
Ramos, a UCLA graduate, wrote the essay for the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C. where he is now a fellow. He has been granted a six-month stay of removal.
Other college students – among them New York student Nadia Habib and a young man from Southern California, Fullerton College student Ricardo Muñiz – have recently been granted temporary stays. Both cases caught the attention of immigrant advocates and the media, which helped. Habib had been close to boarding a flight when her news came.
Those who aren’t students, aren’t English speakers and don’t have the same connections or savvy – but who still qualify for a review under the Obama administration’s guidelines for leniency – have to hustle. And that’s assuming they know what to do.
The Washington Post recently profiled Paula Godoy, a young Virginia mother who had 24 hours before the flight to Guatemala she was due to be on took off. From the piece:
She picked up her cellphone at 7:45 a.m. and called her attorney in Manassas. He spoke little Spanish and she spoke little English, but he was her only chance left. She had gone through four lawyers and $10,000 since November 2009, when a police officer pulled her over for driving with a suspended license and discovered she had entered the country twice without documentation. While the government began to push for her removal, Godoy e-mailed congressmen and took a bus to New York to meet a self-proclaimed immigration specialist who charged her $1,500 and then stopped returning her calls.
Finally, late last month, a friend recommended that Godoy visit Ricky Malik, a young lawyer in Manassas. He told Godoy about the just-released guidelines and helped her apply for a stay of removal for two more years in the United States. He stapled a copy of the guidelines to her request. Godoy had been calling him for updates five or six times every day since.
After a mad eleventh-hour scramble, Godoy was also granted six additional months to straighten out her situation, if it’s possible.
In the meantime, deportations have hit a record one million in just two and a half years. During a recent roundtable interview in which he addressed questions from a Latino media audience, President Obama reiterated that the deportation focus is on criminals, adding that the high removal numbers count the repatriations of people caught crossing illegally at the border.
Part of the uneven implementation of the guidelines behind the August policy shift is that the laws remain what they are, and immigration officials follow them. And as mentioned in the June 17 memo urging officials to use discretion with low-priority immigrants, the operative term is “case-by-case basis.” From the Washington Post piece:
The government said it plans to reconsider the status of 300,000 illegal residents under the new guidelines, including many who already received deportation orders. But sometimes in Washington, a solution isn’t necessarily a fix. Even with the guidelines in place, there is no way for illegal immigrants to apply for review, and the government has yet to announce which cases will be reevaluated, when, and by whom. The new guidelines are not a law or a bill or even a policy; they are a suggestion that will be interpreted day by day, case by case.
Ramos, the nearly-deported young activist, concluded his essay with “some advice for Obama.” First, he encouraged the president to get rid of the contractors. “Then,” he wrote,” “he should tell immigration authorities to actually follow his new, common-sense approach.”
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http://pulse.yahoo.com/_K3IEAC3TPYT6E5FCHQ5NCDAJE4 Jennifer
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http://www.facebook.com/people/Dave-Francis/100002158029860 Dave Francis
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