Executive Pay Is One Thing. Next Stop: Immigration
By Daphne Eviatar 2/4/09 1:22 PM

Among the many hot-button issues that President Obama weighed in on during his presidential campaign and followed up on in his first week in office, immigration was decidedly NOT one of them. But as more information comes to light about how the Bush administration used law enforcement to appease the GOP’s anti-illegal immigration wing – and the nation’s economy continues to hemorrhage jobs — the Obama administration will likely be forced to start coming up with some answers.

The New York Times’ Nina Bernstein has a revealing story today about how the Bush administration sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to raid immigrants’ homes, claiming it was targeting dangerous terrorists. In fact, documents produced in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by a Cardozo Law School clinic reveal that the agency in 2006 changed its internal rules and forgot all about terrorists. Instead, it started raiding the homes of any immigrant who had overstayed a visa. In fact, according to a report released today from the Migration Policy Institute, 73 percent of the nearly 97,000 people arrested by special ICE “fugitive operations teamsâ€