Obama Administration Announces New Initiative to Drop Low-Priority Deportation Cases

Last week the Obama administration finally responded to growing pressure from various constituencies by outlining some meaningful administrative fixes to our country's broken immigration system.

If this initiative is successful, it could provide temporary relief to hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including DREAM Act-eligible youth and other undocumented individuals in sympathetic circumstances.

• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will create a joint-commission with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to review 300,000 existing deportation cases to identify immigrants that are not high priority cases for removal;
• Those that are not high priority individuals for removal — DREAMers, primary caregivers, veterans or relatives of persons in armed services, among others identified in an agency memo (PDF) — will have their cases closed. These individuals should then become eligible to apply for work permits;
• This initiative does not provide individuals with an earned path to Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) status or U.S. Citizenship. Work authorization is not guaranteed, either.

This is encouraging news, especially for an administration that hesitated to implement meaningful executive action to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation. That said, these fixes only benefit a small percentage of the estimated eleven million people without status living in the U.S. There is still work to be done to expand relief to those who are not yet in the system. Additionally, too few avenues currently exist for immigrants, including DREAM Act-eligible youth, to adjust their status and apply for work authorization.

Campus Progress will continue to work with our partners to support initiatives that steer our nation’s deportation policy away from the harsh and expensive enforcement tactics it currently employs and toward those that strengthen families, opportunity, and the U.S. economy.

Correction: The article originally said there are an estimated eleven million people in deportation proceedings. This had been corrected to "eleven million people without status living in the U.S."

Eduardo Garcia is an advocacy associate at Campus Progress. Follow him @itseddie.

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