Thread: Few Satisfied by Obama's Immigration Policies

Few Satisfied by Obama's Immigration Policies

A task force created to help overhaul a controversial deportation program instead witnessed five of its 19 members resign last week, another sign the Obama administration’s immigration policy remains politically problematic for him at a time when courting Latinos is crucial to his re-election.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Task Force on Secure Communities released its report evaluating the interagency operation that determines if immigrants arrested by local police are deportable under federal immigration laws. The task force recommended that the federal government re-evaluate its mission to focus deportation efforts on criminal aliens, not illegal immigrants arrested for minor traffic violations or noncriminal misdemeanors.

Homeland Security created the task force in June in response to widespread criticism of the Secure Communities program. Launched in 2008, the Secure Communities program was touted as a way to ferret out and deport criminal aliens here in the U.S. legally and illegally.

Immigrant and civil rights’ groups have accused the government of misleading the public about the program’s intent and say it has been used far more broadly to deport immigrants. Critics of Secure Communities say it has helped the Obama administration ramp up the number of deportations and is part of the reason why the government is currently on pace to prosecute more illegal immigrants in three years for illegal entry or illegal reentry than President George W. Bush did in his eight-year term.

At the same time it created the task force in June, DHS issued a directive urging Immigration and Customs Enforcement prosecutors to use “prosecutorial discretionâ€

[quote]Blasé said she is currently looking for someone to take over Somos Republicans. In the meantime she says she is recruiting college students who are sympathetic to immigrants in order to achieve far-teaching reform.

“We want to marry the Anglo sympathizers to the DREAM Act kids,â€