US plans mass deportation of undocumented immigrants

Word leaked out last week that the Obama administration was making plans to round up and deport hundreds of families, perhaps a few thousand people, early in the new year.

The Department of Homeland Security has begun preparing for a series of raids that would target for deportation hundreds of families who have flocked to the United States since the start of last year, according to people familiar with the operation.

The nationwide campaign, to be carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as soon as early January, would be the first large-scale effort to deport families who have fled violence in Central America, those familiar with the plan said. More than 100,000 families with both adults and children have made the journey across the southwest border since last year, though this migration has largely been overshadowed by a related surge of unaccompanied minors.

The ICE operation would target only adults and children who have already been ordered removed from the United States by an immigration judge, according to officials familiar with the undertaking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because planning is ongoing and the operation has not been given final approval by DHS. The adults and children would be detained wherever they can be found and immediately deported. The number targeted is expected to be in the hundreds and possibly greater.

On the one hand, this seems somewhat reasonable. Hundreds of thousands of Central Americans have come to the US in recent years and the Obama administration was allegedly making plans to deport those individuals who had already exhausted all legal remedies to stay and those who had not shown up for their immigration court hearings. This is consistent with what President Obama said that he had planned to do in 2014 during that year's unaccompanied minors surge.

On the other hand, such a policy undermines the three-quarters of a million dollar aid package recently approved for the region. Perhaps this plan to mass deport was part of the grand bargain for the aid package? If not, I highly doubt that Republicans and Democrats are going to thank the administration for now taking border security more seriously and offering greater assistance.

It is immoral to send those who have fled violence back to a situation that might be worse than when they originally left, particularly El Salvador. Hundreds, perhaps a few thousand, people will be deported while millions are left insecure not knowing if they will be targeted. The administration is not targeting those individuals who have come into contact with the law but instead reverting to the Bush administration's raiding tactics which were very unpopular. There's also little to think that this plan will actually deter more migrants from leaving the region for the opportunity that the US provides.

So then why is the Obama administration pushing this plan when it looks like a lose-lose policy? This Vox article provides a terrific overview of the plan and its implications. Dara Lind also includes a theory that the target of the deportation plan is really US court. At various levels, they are now ruling on the constitutionality of Obama's overall immigration plan, of which selective deportation is just one part.

So far, the court case has gone against the Obama administration. Both the district court judge and the 5th Circuit put the administration's plans to protect millions more unauthorized immigrants from deportation on hold while the courts consider whether those plans are constitutional (which is a hint that, according to those judges, they probably aren't). The Supreme Court has always been more likely to side with the federal government in this case than the lower courts are, but that doesn't mean that the case is a slam dunk for the administration — or that the court will decide to take it up this year at all, rather than taking it up next session when Obama is already out of office.

One of the biggest legal questions about the administration's immigration policy is whether there's a "limiting principle" — in other words, whether there are any unauthorized immigrants the government actually feels it has to enforce the law against. Deporting thousands of mothers with children is certainly one way to demonstrate that the Obama administration really does feel it has to enforce the law in some cases. Furthermore, the 2014 memo that made immigrants with deportation orders a priority was part of the same set of executive actions as the programs the Obama administration is currently challenging in court. By making a big show of enforcing the priorities it set for itself, the administration is demonstrating that it takes that whole set of policies seriously — not just the parts that are nice to unauthorized immigrants. And it invites the court to do the same.

 Sounds like a plausible reason but risky and immoral at the same time.