The Obama Administration has
failed to restore civil liberties when it comes to immigration. With a new
administration in office, many advocates saw an opportunity to step away from
the harsh Bush Administration immigration enforcement tactics like worksite
raids, as well as improve the sometimes deadly conditions of immigration
detention centers. While the Obama Administration has taken one step forward by
calling for comprehensive immigration reform, they have taken two steps back by
violating the privacy and due process rights of immigrants.
Recently,
the Administration has implemented a number of harsh immigration enforcement
measures. These include violating worker privacy by auditing
employee paperwork for hundreds of businesses; expanding the flawed, inaccurate
and insecure E-Verify
system; expanding federal programs such as 287g and Secure
Communities, which result in local law enforcement doing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’
jobs; and rejecting accountability for the conditions of detention centers,
effectively brushing off the human rights of immigrant detainees.
It is widely understood that the
Obama Administration’s harsh stance against illegal immigration is a trade off
for including legalization for the over 12 million undocumented immigrants in Senator Schumer’s (D-NY) Comprehensive
Immigration Reform bill. Such a trade off hardly seems reasonable. It would
take an estimated 34 years to deport all of
the undocumented immigrants in the country. Deportation simply is not realistic.
So why must we compromise civil liberties in the immigration system to include
legalization, which is both reasonable and inevitable?