President Obama and his supporters continue to roll out efforts to woo Latino voters, but Latino and immigrant advocates say Mr. Obama's message will be hard to swallow without better attempts to reform the administration's deportation policies.
The Obama administration has pledged to focus its deportation efforts only on illegal immigrants who could be considered the "worst of the worst," as some have put it, and in November the Department of Homeland Security began reviewing about 300,000 backlogged immigration cases. However, data released by the department last week showed that few of the undocumented immigrants with pending cases -- fewer than 10 percent -- qualify for relief from the system, or "prosecutorial discretion."
"It's just outrageous [that] an administration that says, 'we're only going to after the worst of the worst' has concocted a system... that says 90 percent of the people are eligible for deportation," Frank Sharry, executive director of the group America's Voice Education Fund, told reporters on a conference call Monday.
Sharry and other immigrant advocates say the "prosecutorial discretion" efforts have fallen short because of a lack of leadership from the top -- pointing both to Napolitano and Mr. Obama. They charge the president and his cabinet members have the power to improve the program, but haven't in the face of Republican criticism. While polls show Mr. Obama still has strong support from Latino voters, those advocates say the continued high deportation rates will take their toll. READ MORE
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