ImmigrationDebate intensifies over Obama deportation instruction to ICE

President Barack Obama’s recent instruction to DHS to find “more humane” ways to deport illegal immigrants has sparked yet another debate between immigration supporters and critics as to what exactly Obama’s directive meant. Supporters of undocumented immigrants hope DHS will cease all deportations deemed unnecessary, while opponents of Obama’s immigration policies urge DHS to carry out the country’s immigration laws as written by Congress.

USA Todayreports that in 1954, in Galvan v. Press, the U.S. Supreme Court noted that the power to create immigration policy is “entrusted exclusively to the Congress.” Congress, however, in 2002 delegated to DHS the power to establish “national immigration policies and priorities.” As a result, DHS has taken control of immigration initiatives and enforcement.

In 2011, John Morton, then Obama’s director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), issued The Morton Memo, detailing a set of principles for ICE agents to follow when determining who to deport. ICE agents were told to focus deportation efforts on undocumented immigrants with extensive criminal records or those who pose a threat to national security.

Critics of the administration’s approach on immigration and deportation claim that although Obama has the right to exercise “prosecutorial discretion,” such authority is exceeded when Obama exempts broad classes of people from federal deportation laws. That argument led a group of ICE agents to sue the Obama administration, claiming the White House’s immigration policies had made it impossible for them to perform their duty to deport illegal immigrants.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor dismissed the lawsuit last year, saying the case had been filed in the wrong jurisdiction, but noted that the agents had a strong case. “The Court concluded that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the Department of Homeland Security has implemented a program contrary to congressional mandate,” O’Connor wrote in July 2013. The case is under appeal.

The Obama administration has to date deported roughly two million undocumented immigrants, the most of any administration in recent history. According to Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, which advocates on behalf of legal and undocumented immigrants, “the Department of Homeland Security has a pretty broad range of authority to decide which individuals will be removed from the country or not. The administration is on solid legal footing … and can still go much further.”