Border agents ordered to help immigrants avoid deportation

Under a new Obama administration directive, immigration agents have been ordered to screen illegal immigrants to help them avoid deportation. The order quickly followed President Barack Obama’s executive order creating a program to help undocumented migrants gain temporary legal status.

The screening procedure is outlined in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) training documents secured by the Associated Press. Agents must use a checklist of questions so they can “prioritize felons, not families”—meaning they don’t pursue deportation for those whose only crime is entering the country illegally, especially if they have family members in the United States. Ironically, the president claimed his program’s effects will “secure the border” and “hold undocumented workers accountable,” as immigrants will ostensibly “pay their fair share of taxes” in a modernized “legal immigration system.”

The new procedures apply to agents in Customs and Border Protection (CPB) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Agents must “immediately begin identifying persons in their custody, as well as newly encountered persons” who may be eligible for protection from deportation.

In the training directives, agents must also review government files to find any jailed immigrants for possible release under the new program. And ICE officials have already begun releasing from federal immigration jails those detainees who qualify for leniency.

Such actions by the DHS herald a sea change for enforcing U.S. immigration laws: The burden is now on government agents to identify which immigrants qualify for deportation deferment. Until now, immigrants or their lawyers had to prove they qualified to stay out of jail and in the country.

Critics have likened the change-up in responsibility to the Internal Revenue Service contacting taxpayers to help them obtain exemptions or deductions to avoid paying taxes they should have already paid.

A spokesman for CPB, Carlos Diaz, said the directives for border agents “provide clear guidance … so that both time and resources are allocated appropriately.” Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., also views Obama’s plan as more of a streamlining tool than a policy change: It will “move criminals and recent arrivals to the front of the deportation line. The emphasis now is on who should be deported first, not just who can be deported.”

But John Malcolm, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department and now a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said the new instructions discourage agents “from anything other than a cursory view” of a person’s status and qualification for leniency.

In November, Obama unveiled his controversial program to grant temporary residency and work authorization to undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents (green card holders). About 4 million out of a probable 11 million illegal immigrants may benefit. And now 25 states are fighting back in the courts, fearing the strain of spending “hundreds of millions of dollars on health, education, and law-enforcement programs” on current undocumented workers getting legal status and a potential new wave of immigrants encouraged to enter the country illegally.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.