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DHS Fails to Meet Target Immigration Goals

Policy center compares transition goals to accomplishments

More than one year into the administration of President Barack Obama, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) still must pursue some key changes in support of immigration reform to embrace Obama's intended immigration policy objectives, a policy group said Tuesday.

DHS must move forward in due process for illegal immigrants by creating an ombudsman at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to investigate complaints and keep its focus on detention reform at ICE, recommended the Immigration Policy Center in its report, The Challenge of Reform: An Analysis of Immigration Policy in the First Year of the Obama Administration.

The department also should keep improving the accuracy of the E-Verify employment eligibility system and focus on prosecuting illegal aliens who have committed serious crimes, the report said.

Furthermore, DHS should set up a National Office on Immigrant Integration with an immigration integration strategy to support it and require US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to clearly spell out how it determines immigration benefits in the cases it adjudicates.

DHS also should create a Refugee Protection Office to coordinate refugee and asylum decision-making across the federal government, the report suggested.

The Immigration Policy Center drew its conclusions by comparing the actions of DHS over the past year against the stated objectives of the Obama transition team in immigration policy.

"This comparison reveals that DHS is a department caught between entrenchment on enforcement and the competing priorities of new reforms," the report stated. "While DHS has failed to meet some key expectations in these areas, it has also engaged thoughtfully and strategically on others, and has made some fundamental changes in how it conducts its immigration business."

The department has shown some progress in achieving its goals in some key areas originally identified by the immigration policy transition team, the report said. The compassion show to Haitians by granting them temporary protected status was a big step forward in emergency response efforts (albeit to a crisis outside of the United States).

Attorney General Eric Holder has provided non-US citizens with the legal recourse to question the effectiveness of their counsel in legal proceedings by overturning a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals in June 2009, the report added.

Moreover, ICE has halted its large-scale worksite raids and generated a list of immigration detention reform priorities, the report said.

USCIS has created an Office of Public Engagement and charged it with more clearly explaining immigration policies while awarding funds to community-based organizations to assist illegal immigrants, the report noted.

The Obama administration has clearly voiced its desire to enact comprehensive immigration reform and it has encouraged Congress to take up legislation in support of the issue, the report said.

However, the White House and DHS have not done very well in other areas, the report warned.

The Obama administration has a poor track record on due process for immigrants, struggling with an overburdened immigration courts system, limitations on the right to counsel, and inadequate review of appeals, the report said.

ICE unwisely expanded its enforcement programs in Secure Communities and 287(g), allowing state and local authorities to pursue large numbers of illegal immigrants with no criminal history, counter to the stated intent of those programs, the report accused.

DHS supported a program called Operation Streamline, which requires mandatory prosecution of non-violent illegal aliens crossing over into US border communities. "It remains unclear whether Operation Streamline has any deterrent effect on migrants crossing the border," the report protested.

Meanwhile, DHS expanded the use of E-Verify without properly training understaffed support personnel at the Social Security Administration and USCIS and without focusing on improving its accuracy, the report said.