Congressmen and commentators complain about alleged spiking of  asylum fraud at our borders. l The Obama administration is allowing young people who finished high school to remain in the U.S. without fear of removal. Immigration courts are administratively closing proceedings rather than ordering aliens out of the country. These three trends have made the news in recent weeks. While it may appear at first blush that the second and third trend are the manifestation of soft-hearted (or humane, take your…

Much has been written  and adorably dramatized by me and others about the new prosecutorial discretion policy announced by President Obama and his administration. Despite continued skepticism in the media, the policy is being boldly implemented, at least in San Diego, where I practice. Pilot programs are underway in Baltimore and Denver and files are being reviewed nationwide. Implementation is being carried out by the Office of Chief Counsel (OCC), a.k.a., Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of the Principal Legal…

Last week I blogged on the attribution to President Obama that he wanted to deport “the worst of the worst” in articles and blogs. In the context of the articles and blogs, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s announced (but hardly yet implemented) policy of exercising prosecutorial discretion and not deporting everyone currently in removal proceedings, the writers give the impression that the President considers millions of people who may be subject to deportation as the worst people in…

President Obama and the Department of Homeland Security, according to press reports, are undergoing a review of hundreds of thousands of pending removal cases, people in immigration court facing possible deportation from the United States, to determine cases that are not worth pursuing. I have commented about this in a movie, here. One concern I express in the movie is that the heightened focus on removing aliens with criminal convictions in their past, particularly long-term permanent residents with decade-old convictions,…