A year after Obama grants young immigrants a respite from deportation, the debate continues

Last June, the Obama administration unveiled a special program that grants some young undocumented immigrants protection from deportation. A year later, that program remains in place and so does the controversey surrounding it.

Under the program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, young immigrants who were brought to this country illegally as children, and who have graduated from high school or served in the U.S. military can apply for temporary permits that allow them to stay and work in the country legally.

Critics of the program argue is little more than a DREAM Act-lite amnesty, a reference to past legislation that would provide a path to citizenship for those same young immigrants.

Among those most offended is Chris Crane, the head of the union that represents immigration enforcement agents. Crane has repeatedly complained that the Obama administration’s policy and it use of prosecutorial discretion, has prevented immigration agents from detaining and deporting immigrants, including some young immigrants who are held in local jails while they are awaiting trial.

Last year, Crane and nine other U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials filed suit in Texas to stop the administration’s DACA policy. The case is currently before a federal judge.

But Crane’s claims seem to be undermined by cases such as that of a 23-year-old Mexican woman who was detained by immigration agents last September in Orange County, after she was arrested for being in possession of a false I.D., according to Talia Inlender, an attorney with Public Counsel, a pro bono law firm in Los Angeles. The woman spent nearly a month in immigration custody. She was released only after Inlender provided evidence that the woman was eligible for DACA.

Moreover, the administration’s use of prosecutorial discretion has not prevented immigration agents from detaining those individuals they find in local jails.

In fact, under a federal program known as Secure Communities, thousands of immigrants have been deported. The program relies on local law enforcement agencies to check the fingerprints of everyone booked into local jails with the FBI, which checks them against criminal databases. The fingerprints are also shared with the Department of Homeland Security, who can then issue a request to local authorities asking them to hold particular individuals for up to 48 hours.

That program was suppose to focus on immigrants with criminal records, but it has led to the detention and deportation of thousands of individuals who have no criminal record.

As the Times’ noted in a July 13, 2012 editorial, in California alone, more than half of the 75,000 people deported under Secure Communities since 2009 had no criminal history or had only misdemeanor convictions.

Surely, immigration agents in California aren’t being kept from detaining anyone, despite the adminsitration’s prosecutorial discretion memo that seeks to prioritize enforcement efforts on those immigrants who pose a risk to public safety.

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