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?
