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Immigration officials are no longer screening out undocumented immigrants who may be eligible for deportation relief under President Barack Obamas most recent executive action, following a Texas judges injunction last week on the deferred-action programs. Some immigration lawyers say the policy shift has made some immigrants vulnerable to deportation again, even though they might have been otherwise protected under the president's executive action on immigration. Some of them are being detained and face deportation proceedings, even though they should be allowed to stay under the Obama policy.

The Obama administration released several memos in November outlining a slate of new immigration policies in light of the deferred-action programs, DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Long-Term Residents) and an expansion of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). One of those directives instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to identify any immigrants in custody who may be eligible for deferred action under these new programs, and close their cases.

But on Feb. 17, a Texas federal judge temporarily halted the executive action, pending resolution of a lawsuit challenging the deferred-action programs. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)officials confirmed to International Business Times that it was no longer taking eligibility of DAPA or the expanded DACA into consideration when dealing with unauthorized immigration cases.

Immigrants who arent in detention or dont have pending deportation orders wont likely be affected. Those who qualify for Obamas 2012 DACA program also are unaffected. But immigrants already on ICEs radar may be facing a heightened risk of deportation -- and some immigration lawyers say they already areseeing the effects.

Weve seen reports coming in from immigration lawyers with clients eligible for DACA or DAPA, saying that theyre being ordered to report to ICE while on supervised release and expeditiously deported, said Matthew Kolken, an immigration lawyer based in Buffalo, New York. He detailed some of those lawyers accounts in a blog post, adding that the reports were coming from all over the country.

ICE has been public about the shift. A recorded message on the ICE Community and Detainee help line states: Unless and until further guidance is given, ICE will not consider the new DAPA and expanded DACA guidelines as the basis for exercising prosecutorial discretion, meaning the policy under which people deemed a low risk would be allowed to stay in the U.S.

Officials also said the agency had removed all information posters in detention facilities notifying immigrants of the new deferred-action programs.

ICE is instead using another November memo issued by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson as the basis for its deportation operations. That memo, which outlines a policy known as prosecutorial discretion, directs ICE agents to use three priority categories when considering which immigrants to detain and ultimately send into deportation proceedings. Those are immigrants who have recently crossed the border, those who present national security or public safety threats and those with felonies or serious misdemeanor convictions. Obama reaffirmed during Wednesdays town hall meeting in Miami that these prioritization guidelines were still very much in effect.

ICE has also confirmed this: The prosecutorial discretion memo is "in full force and effect, and ICE continues to effectively use its resources by implementing the Secretarys priorities directive," said ICE Director Sarah Saldaa in a statement.

Any immigrant who qualifies for DAPA or DACA would categorically not fall into any of these groups. But some lawyers have said they were still being targeted.

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Immigration Reform: Authorities No Longer Shielding DAPA ...

By Zoltan L. Hajnal February 27

Some Republicans are so opposed to immigration reform that they are willing to withhold funding for Department of Homeland Security just to fight back against President Obamas executive order on immigration. To many observers, this in politically foolish. In their minds, the countrys increasing racial diversity makes it risky to oppose immigration reform.

This argument makes some sense. Immigrants and other minorities tend to care a lot about immigration and they tend to favor the Democratic Party on the issue. Recent polls indicate that Latino approval of President Obama went up markedly after he issued his executive order on immigration.

So why dont Republicans get it? The answer is that Republicans opposition to immigration reform actually represents a winning strategy, not a losing one. Heres why.

Republicans win or lose largely depending on white voters. Whites still make up the vast majority of voters some 75 percent in 2014 and whites tend to favor the Republican Party by large margins. Republican congressional candidates garnered 60 percent of the white vote in 2014. All told, 89 percent of all Republican votes in 2014 came from white voters. Put simply, the Republican Party doesnt really need the minority vote.

Moreover, whites also increasingly care about immigration. A new book by Marisa Abrajano and myself reveals the significant impact immigration has had on white party politics.

We find that white views on immigration are correlated with their partisan identity and their electoral choices. In the last midterm, for example, 75 percent of Americans who felt that most illegal immigrants should be deported voted for Republican candidates. By contrast, only 35 percent of those who favored a chance for undocumented immigrants to apply for legal status favored Republicans. As I show in research with Michael Rivera, the relationship between attitudes on immigration and white vote choice holds even after accounting for the other factors that we think affect how people vote.

But does this correlation imply causation? To answer that more difficult question, we looked to see if attitudes on immigration at one point in time predicted changes in partisanship later on. The answer is yes. To be sure, the effect is not large but even small individual shifts in partisanship, once repeated over the course of decades, can become massive electoral shifts over time.

In another study, Marisa Abrajano, Hans Hassell, and I showed that reporting on immigration was associated with shifts in the overall share of white Democrats and white Republicans in the electorate. It does, and to a startling degree. The more media coverage of immigration is negative, the larger the share of white Republicans in the electorate.

By any measure, fears of immigration are driving many white Americans to the Republican Party. And, indeed, the Republican strategy on immigration appears to have been successful. Republicans now control the House and the Senate, the governors office in 31 states, and two-thirds of the state legislatures. They are winning the political war.

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Opposition to immigration reform is a winning strategy for ...

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. Jeb Bush called himself a reform-minded conservative on Friday and stood his ground on immigration reform before a skeptical crowd of conservative activists.

The simple fact is there is no plan to deport 11 million people, Bush told the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

He argued that there should be a path to legal status for those immigrants here illegally if they work ... dont break the law, learn English and contribute to society.

At the same time, the former Florida governor lined up squarely with the conservative faithful furious at President Obama for bypassing Congress by issuing an executive order to protect undocumented immigrants.

The simple fact is the president has gone way beyond his powers to do this and Congress has every right to reinstate their responsibility, Bush said.

He faced questions about his tenure as governor of Florida, when he tried to provide drivers licenses to illegal immigrants and, later, supported letting undocumented students pay in-state tuition at state colleges.

Bush drew some boos, but stuck to his position that illegal immigrants have to be brought into the American fold.

I know theres disagreement here, he conceded.

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Jeb Bush holds his ground on immigration reform

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) disavowed himself again on Friday from an immigration overhaul plan he once cosponsored, arguing that it didn't work amid lax enforcement by the Obama administration.

Rubio, who cosponsored a bipartisan immigration reform bill in 2013, said he's still eager to deal with the fate of roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country, but "What Ive learned, is you cant even have a conversation about that until people believe and know not just believe, but its proven to them that future illegal immigration will be controlled. That is the single-biggest lesson of the last two years. "

Since the bipartisan bill failed to advance in the GOP-controlled House, Rubio has endorsed a piecemeal approach to solving the nation's immigration issues that begins by fortifying the U.S.-Mexico border before dealing with issues related to legal and illegal immigration. But reiterating those points Friday in front of a room packed with conservative activists helped endear him to the crowd even more.

The first-term senator was greeted with a standing ovation and earned a spirited response from the crowd as he delivered a robust conservative defense of American exceptionalism by jabbing President Obama's foreign policy, subtly digging former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and drawing subtle contrasts between himself and potential GOP rivals for the White House.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) urged the audience at the second day of the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference to consider what must be done to ensure America remains "exceptional." (AP)

"Sometimes you wouldnt know were an exceptional nation by listening to the president, whos described our nation as sometimes being arrogant or dictating terms to others," Rubio said. "But Americans know were exceptional and you know who else knows were exceptional? The world does. After all, when was the last time you heard about a boatload of Americans arriving on the shores of another country?"

"Because of the Obama/Clinton foreign policy, our allies no longer trust us and our enemies no longer fear us," he added later. He said that Obama is running "A foreign policy that treats the Ayatollah of Iran than the prime minister of Israel."

"Imagine if we had a president who doesnt travel the world bad-mouthing America. After all, thats the UNs job," he quipped later.

Rubio was initially expected to speak later in the day, but was given an early-morning slot -- one that will allow him to return to Capitol Hill for votes expected later today as Congress tries to sort out how to avoid a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security

Under questioning by conservative commentator Sean Hannity, Rubio faulted Democrats for holding up consideration of legislation that would block executive actions taken by Obama in November to overhaul the nation's immigration policy. He agreed with Hannity that if Congress ever proceeds on the issue, border security will have to be considered first -- and that changes will need to be fully implemented before the debate can continue.

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At CPAC, Rubio emphasizes his distance from the immigration plan he once backed

By Zoltan L. Hajnal February 27 at 11:00 AM

Some Republicans are so opposed to immigration reform that they are willing to withhold funding for Department of Homeland Security just to fight back against President Obamas executive order on immigration. To many observers, this in politically foolish. In their minds, the countrys increasing racial diversity makes it risky to oppose immigration reform.

This argument makes some sense. Immigrants and other minorities tend to care a lot about immigration and they tend to favor the Democratic Party on the issue. Recent polls indicate that Latino approval of President Obama went up markedly after he issued his executive order on immigration.

So why dont Republicans get it? The answer is that Republicans opposition to immigration reform actually represents a winning strategy, not a losing one. Heres why.

Republicans win or lose largely depending on white voters. Whites still make up the vast majority of voters some 75 percent in 2014 and whites tend to favor the Republican Party by large margins. Republican congressional candidates garnered 60 percent of the white vote in 2014. All told, 89 percent of all Republican votes in 2014 came from white voters. Put simply, the Republican Party doesnt really need the minority vote.

Moreover, whites also increasingly care about immigration. A new book by Marisa Abrajano and myself reveals the significant impact immigration has had on white party politics.

We find that white views on immigration are correlated with their partisan identity and their electoral choices. In the last midterm, for example, 75 percent of Americans who felt that most illegal immigrants should be deported voted for Republican candidates. By contrast, only 35 percent of those who favored a chance for undocumented immigrants to apply for legal status favored Republicans. As I show in research with Michael Rivera, the relationship between attitudes on immigration and white vote choice holds even after accounting for the other factors that we think affect how people vote.

But does this correlation imply causation? To answer that more difficult question, we looked to see if attitudes on immigration at one point in time predicted changes in partisanship later on. The answer is yes. To be sure, the effect is not large but even small individual shifts in partisanship, once repeated over the course of decades, can become massive electoral shifts over time.

In another study, Marisa Abrajano, Hans Hassell, and I showed that reporting on immigration was associated with shifts in the overall share of white Democrats and white Republicans in the electorate. It does, and to a startling degree. The more media coverage of immigration is negative, the larger the share of white Republicans in the electorate.

By any measure, fears of immigration are driving many white Americans to the Republican Party. And, indeed, the Republican strategy on immigration appears to have been successful. Republicans now control the House and the Senate, the governors office in 31 states, and two-thirds of the state legislatures. They are winning the political war.

See the article here:
Monkey Cage: Opposition to immigration reform is a winning strategy for Republicans