Immigration Enforcement Machine Rolls On

ICE under Bush was Out. Of. Control.

But has it changed under Obama?

We've not had workplace raids on the scale of Postville.  But home raids continue apace.  Many (not all) ICE attorneys continue to fight to win cases rather than to see justice served.  Immigrants are still dying in detention.  TRAC reports that immigration enforcement under the Obama Administration is returning to the unusually high levels seen under President Bush.

And Obama says things like this:

One of the things that was said around the table is the American people still don't have enough confidence that Congress and any administration is going to get serious about border security, and so they're concerned that any immigration reform simply will be a short-term legalization of undocumented workers with no long-term solution with respect to future flows of illegal immigration.

without seeming to understand that the "illegal immigration" problem is one that Congress largely created.  Criminalizing immigrants already here and removing lawful avenues of entry for low-income workers was a sneaky way of reducing immigration levels without appearing to support nativism directly.

But the heavyweights in the Democratic Party have bought into the crimmigration storyline manufactured by conservative think tanks.  Which would help explain my concerns about ICE under Obama, and my fear that he is a long way from the Con-Law classes he used to teach at U Chicago.