As many as 87% of undocumented migrants in the US will have a “degree of protection” under Barack Obama’s new deportation enforcement guidelines, according to a new report by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI).
Of an estimated 11 million “unauthorized immigrants” in the US, only 1.4 million have criminal convictions or crossed the border on or after 1 January 2014 – the conditions that make them priorities for deportation under the new guidelines, according to the report.
The new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) guidelines direct law enforcement to target such immigrants, as well as gang members and people who pose a threat to national security, over the remaining 9.6 million. This exercise of prosecutorial discretion arguably offers some implicit protection.
The report’s author, Marc Rosenblum, notes that there is a margin of error of about 10% for the numbers involved, which largely rely on federal government figures.
Deportations have steadily increased since 2003 – reaching a record high of 438,421 in 2013. But in 2010 the Obama administration codified some longstanding priorities, a decision that shifted the focus of deportations from the interior of the US to its border with Mexico.
In the first three years of Obama’s presidency, almost half of all deportations were from places not near the border, according to the report, which adds that such removals “placed substantial strain on long settled immigrant communities”.
Under those rules, the institute estimated that 27% of undocumented immigrants would have been high-priority targets for deportation. According to the MPI, Obama’s newer guidelines could reduce overall deportations by about 25,000 annually, and reduce interior deportations to below 100,000.
Rosenblum adds that increased deportations at the border may offset the decline, as has been the case in recent years. Along the border, the Obama administration has stepped up stringent enforcement measures, including more family detention centers to cope with a rush of Central American migrants last year.
More explicit protection could be available to about 5 million undocumented immigrants should the president’s other executive orders on immigration survive the courts. His plans to shield certain immigrants from deportation have been put on hold by federal courts, thanks to a lawsuit brought by Texas and 25 other states that say the programs are unconstitutional.
But the new instructions to law enforcers and reshuffling at the DHS have not been challenged in court, which the institute says could have an outsize effect around the country.
The report also highlights the new Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), a replacement for the controversial Secure Communities program that was resisted by local police departments over its requests to detain some immigrants.
While Secure Communities let the federal immigration enforcer ICE to take custody of any “potentially deportable noncitizen”, as the report puts it, PEP limits those detentions to people who have been convicted of a serious crime or threaten public safety.
The new program will also try to better cooperate with local police departments, some of which accused Secure Communities of “funneling low-priority unauthorized immigrants into the deportation system”, the report says. Those concerns led so many departments to oppose the program that “more than half of the US unauthorized population [lives] in jurisdictions that refuse to honor some or all immigration detainers”, according to the report.
Some self-declared “sanctuary cities” are again grappling with their rules on immigration, however.
San Francisco returned to the question this month after a young woman was shot dead, allegedly by a Mexican felon who had already been deported five times from the US.
The “degree of protection” that nine million immigrants receive depends in large part on how well local police work with their federal counterparts, an uncertainty the report acknowledges “remains an open question”.
The problem of immigration reform has paralyzed Congress for years, despite earnest efforts by Republicans and Democrats to find a compromise in 2013. Since then campaigns by either side have failed, prompting the president to sidestep Congress with executive actions.
Although the flight north by migrant families and children has slowed since the mass movement last year, the issue has again grown contentious as the 2016 election approaches. Republicans have in particular struggled to articulate cogent positions on the issue, with some candidates inflaming anti-immigrant sentiments and others struggling to develop policy with greater appeal to Hispanic voters.
