Immigration blunder
By Boston Herald Editorial Staff
Monday, August 22, 2011

The pattern is now clear. When President Obama doesn’t get his way with Congress he will do whatever it takes to do an end run around it.

He hasn’t been able to get an immigration reform bill. In fact, couldn’t even get the more modest DREAM Act passed which would give young illegal immigrants who go to college or serve in the military a path to citizenship. So late last week Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) did by administrative fiat what the Congress could not or would not.

They ordered a halt in the deportation of some 300,000 illegal immigrants already on ICE’s radar screen, pending a case by case review that will prioritize deportations of those with criminal records.

Of course, it would be cynical to think this has anything to do with the fact that we’re in another election cycle. Or that the Latino community and immigrant advocacy groups are furious with Obama over the Secure Communities program, aimed at tracking and deporting illegal aliens in trouble with the law. The announcement by Napolitano followed by a mere 48 hours a protest by those same groups of Secure Communities.

And as if to prove the point that this administration will get what it wants no matter what Congress says, ICE Director John Morton in a memo to ICE agents advised exercising “discretionâ€