WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will act on his own to make changes in immigration policy as Congress is not expected to move on the issue this year, a White House official said Monday. Obama is expected to refocus immigration enforcement away from the country’s interior and onto a Mexican border that has seen a tide of children crossing illegally from Central America, the official said.

This official said Obama decided to bypass Congress after House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner informed him last week that the chamber would not vote on an immigration overhaul this year.

Obama was expected to address the status of immigration policy later Monday.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans ahead of Obama’s remarks.

Obama’s decision effectively declares that a broad-based change in immigration policy is dead for the year, and perhaps for the remainder of his administration. Changing immigration laws and providing a path to citizenship for about 11 million immigrants in the country illegally has been one Obama’s top priorities as he sought to conclude his presidency with major second-term victory.

Obama’s ability to undertake changes on his own is limited.

He is instructing Homeland Security Department Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder to present him with executive actions he can take without congressional approval by the end of the summer.

The Border Patrol in south Texas has been overwhelmed for several months by an influx of unaccompanied children and parents traveling with young children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Unlike Mexican immigrants arrested after entering the U.S. illegally, those from Central America cannot be as easily returned to their countries. Obama is seeking authority to act more quickly.

The Border Patrol has apprehended more than 52,000 child immigrants traveling on their own since October.

In responding to the influx of unaccompanied children, Obama plans to concentrate immigration resources on the border areas. The move will effectively further reduce the number of deportations in the country’s interior by stressing enforcement action on individuals who are either recent unlawful border crossers or who present a national security, public safety, or border security threat.

The decision coincides with a White House request to Congress for new powers to deport newly arrived immigrant children traveling without their parents.

Immigrant advocacy groups immediately criticized the administration’s decision on child border crossers.

“President Obama is asking Congress to change the law to enable the government to inflict expedited removal on unaccompanied children. That is simply unconscionable,” said Leslie A. Holman, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “No matter what you call it, rapid deportations without any meaningful hearing for children who are rightly afraid of the violence and turmoil from which they fled is wrong, and contradicts the fundamental values of this nation.”

Under current law, children arriving at the border from Central America have a right to an immigration hearing before a judge, but under Obama’s proposed changes, which must be approved by Congress, that would no longer be automatic and instead the kids would have to make their case to a Border Patrol agent, advocates said.

Obama’s actions represent a delicate balancing act between responding to what the White House has called a “humanitarian crisis” over unaccompanied children and a demand from immigration activists to reduce the administration’s record number of deportations.

Deportations have spiked under the Obama administration to a total of around 2 million so far — the same number removed during the full eight years of the George W. Bush administration. At the same time, formal removals from the interior have decreased each year of the Obama administration, while the number of deportations from the border has increased.

The Obama administration also has taken steps already to focus deportations on people with more serious criminal records or those who pose a threat. But this approach, while harshly criticized by Republicans, never succeeded in calming concerns in immigrant communities about how deportations are conducted.

Obama on Monday was dropping by a meeting at the White House among immigration overhaul advocates and Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Many of those advocates reacted harshly to Obama’s plan Monday to seek emergency money from Congress that would, among other things, help conduct “an aggressive deterrence strategy focused on the removal and repatriation of recent border crossers.”

Obama, in a letter to congressional leaders, also is asking for increased penalties for persons who smuggle immigrants who are vulnerable, such as children.

• Politics & Government
• Immigration Issues
• Barack Obama
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• immigration policy

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will act on his own to make changes in immigration policy as Congress is not expected to move on the issue this year, a White House official said Monday. Obama is expected to refocus immigration enforcement away from the country’s interior and onto a Mexican border that has seen a tide of children crossing illegally from Central America, the official said.

This official said Obama decided to bypass Congress after House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner informed him last week that the chamber would not vote on an immigration overhaul this year.

Obama was expected to address the status of immigration policy later Monday.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans ahead of Obama’s remarks.

Obama’s decision effectively declares that a broad-based change in immigration policy is dead for the year, and perhaps for the remainder of his administration. Changing immigration laws and providing a path to citizenship for about 11 million immigrants in the country illegally has been one Obama’s top priorities as he sought to conclude his presidency with major second-term victory.

Obama’s ability to undertake changes on his own is limited.

He is instructing Homeland Security Department Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder to present him with executive actions he can take without congressional approval by the end of the summer.

The Border Patrol in south Texas has been overwhelmed for several months by an influx of unaccompanied children and parents traveling with young children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Unlike Mexican immigrants arrested after entering the U.S. illegally, those from Central America cannot be as easily returned to their countries. Obama is seeking authority to act more quickly.

The Border Patrol has apprehended more than 52,000 child immigrants traveling on their own since October.

In responding to the influx of unaccompanied children, Obama plans to concentrate immigration resources on the border areas. The move will effectively further reduce the number of deportations in the country’s interior by stressing enforcement action on individuals who are either recent unlawful border crossers or who present a national security, public safety, or border security threat.

The decision coincides with a White House request to Congress for new powers to deport newly arrived immigrant children traveling without their parents.

Immigrant advocacy groups immediately criticized the administration’s decision on child border crossers.

“President Obama is asking Congress to change the law to enable the government to inflict expedited removal on unaccompanied children. That is simply unconscionable,” said Leslie A. Holman, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “No matter what you call it, rapid deportations without any meaningful hearing for children who are rightly afraid of the violence and turmoil from which they fled is wrong, and contradicts the fundamental values of this nation.”

Under current law, children arriving at the border from Central America have a right to an immigration hearing before a judge, but under Obama’s proposed changes, which must be approved by Congress, that would no longer be automatic and instead the kids would have to make their case to a Border Patrol agent, advocates said.

Obama’s actions represent a delicate balancing act between responding to what the White House has called a “humanitarian crisis” over unaccompanied children and a demand from immigration activists to reduce the administration’s record number of deportations.

Deportations have spiked under the Obama administration to a total of around 2 million so far — the same number removed during the full eight years of the George W. Bush administration. At the same time, formal removals from the interior have decreased each year of the Obama administration, while the number of deportations from the border has increased.

The Obama administration also has taken steps already to focus deportations on people with more serious criminal records or those who pose a threat. But this approach, while harshly criticized by Republicans, never succeeded in calming concerns in immigrant communities about how deportations are conducted.

Obama on Monday was dropping by a meeting at the White House among immigration overhaul advocates and Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Many of those advocates reacted harshly to Obama’s plan Monday to seek emergency money from Congress that would, among other things, help conduct “an aggressive deterrence strategy focused on the removal and repatriation of recent border crossers.”

Obama, in a letter to congressional leaders, also is asking for increased penalties for persons who smuggle immigrants who are vulnerable, such as children.

• Politics & Government
• Immigration Issues
• Barack Obama
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• immigration policy

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the face of an unyielding Congress, President Barack Obama will act on his own to make changes in immigration policy, says a White House official, who indicated executive steps Obama could begin promptly as he refocuses immigration enforcement away from the country’s interior and on to a Mexican border overrun by children crossing illegally from Central America.

The official said Obama decided to bypass Congress after House speaker John Boehner informed him last week that the House would not vote on an immigration overhaul this year. Obama was expected to address the status of immigration policy later Monday.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss the plans by name in advance of Obama’s presentation.

Obama’s decision effectively declares that a broad based change in immigration policy is dead for the year, and perhaps for the remainder of his administration. Changing immigration laws and providing a path to citizenship for about 11 million immigrants in the country illegally has been one Obama’s top priorities as he sought to conclude his presidency with a major second-term victory.

Obama’s ability to undertake changes on his own is limited, however.

He is instructing Homeland Security Department Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder to present him with executive actions he can take without congressional approval by the end of the summer.

Still, in responding to the influx of unaccompanied children, Obama plans to concentrate immigration resources on the border areas. The move will effectively reduce the number of deportations in the country’s interior by stressing enforcement action on individuals who are either recent unlawful border crossers or who present a national security, public safety, or border security threat.

• Politics & Government
• Immigration Issues
• Barack Obama
• White House
• immigration policy
• unaccompanied children

Washington (AFP) – One year into congressional efforts to overhaul US immigration reform, the nation’s 11 million undocumented migrants are no closer to legal status, with a swelling humanitarian border crisis only highlighting the system’s dysfunction.

Reform efforts are dead in gridlocked Washington, and fingers of blame are pointing every which way.

Republican opponents of President Barack Obama say his administration has failed to seal the porous US-Mexico border.

Democrats accuse House Republicans of sabotaging the US Senate’s bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill, which passed with great fanfare one year ago Friday.

That first serious attempt at immigration reform since 1986 imposed a series of tough conditions, including a quasi-militarization of the border and a boost in quotas for skilled-worker visas.

But Republicans who control the House of Representatives ultimately shelved the proposal, spooked at the thought of offending their conservative constituents by legalizing millions of immigrants, especially after Hispanic-Americans voted for Obama in droves in 2008 and 2012.

Now, the steady increase of minors, illicitly smuggled from Central America and across Mexico into the United States, has further inflamed an already fiery debate.

Democrats warned this week that lawmakers have until their August recess to work out a legislative solution, or the White House will begin to act on its own.

“We’re at the end of the line,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Robert Menendez, an architect of last year’s bill.

“We’re not bluffing by setting a legislative deadline for them to act.”

Caught in the middle of the row is House Speaker John Boehner, who has voiced his desire for an overhaul but has appeared straightjacketed by the conservative wing of his party.

“I hope that Speaker Boehner will speak up today,” said Senator Dick Durbin.

“And if he does not, the president will borrow the power that is needed to solve the problems of immigration.”

Translation: Obama could suspend the deportations of thousands of undocumented migrants who can meet certain criteria.

He took a similar step in 2012, just before the presidential election, granting temporary residence permits to youths who arrived before their 16th birthday. He renewed the program, known as DACA, this year for two more years.

- Border ‘out of control’-

Parents of US-born children, or those receiving DACA relief, for example, could get temporary authorization to stay this summer, according to Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.

But the humanitarian crisis at the border “feeds this perception and this narrative that the border is out of control,” Rosenblum told AFP.

It is a dramatic turnaround from 2011, when the number of arrested illegal immigrants fell to a historic low.

Since October, 52,000 unaccompanied children under age 17 have been detained crossing the border, twice the number from the same period a year ago.

In total, more than 90,000 could be arrested this year, 15 times more than in 2011, according to official figures cited by a Republican lawmaker.

Three-quarters come from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Fleeing spasms of violence in their home countries, many are lured by false rumors of “permisos,” or residence permits for minors, that are only fueled by what Republican critics argue is Obama’s pro-immigration message.

“Apparently, word has gotten out that once encountered by Border Patrol agents and processed, thanks to this administration’s lax enforcement policies, one will likely never be removed,” House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, who oversees House immigration legislation through his committee, told a hearing this week.

The uproar has forced Obama into the awkward position of pleading with Central Americans not to rush the US border.

“Our message absolutely is, don’t send your children unaccompanied, on trains or through a bunch of smugglers,” Obama told ABC News on Thursday.

“If they do make it, they’ll get sent back.”

Democrats see a rapidly closing window of opportunity, with few congressional work weeks to thrash out a deal.

Americans elect a new Congress in November, and should Republicans gain control of the Senate, comprehensive immigration reform will hardly be a priority.

• Politics & Government
• Immigration Issues
• Barack Obama
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DENVER (AP) — The 2014 electoral map makes it unlikely Republicans will pay an immediate political price for the recent death of an immigration overhaul bill, except in one key, perennial swing state: Colorado.

The state is home to a marquee Senate contest, a sharply competitive House race and one of the largest Hispanic populations in the nation, a group that comprises 14 percent of the state’s voters.

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives declined to take any action on immigration despite a shift in fast-growing, immigrant-heavy voting blocs away from Republicans and a bipartisan Senate bill that would step up border security and provide a route to citizenship for many of the 11 million people here illegally.

The inactivity angered immigration rights supporters, but outside of Colorado the GOP faces little threat from potential backlash over the issue in the November elections.

Most Republican representatives are in districts with very small minority populations, and they had more to worry about from potential primary challengers coming from their right to oppose any action on the failed immigration proposal. Most Senate races this year are in states with small Hispanic populations, as well.

Analysts expect the GOP to pay a price in 2016, when Republicans will need to capture states such as Nevada, Colorado and Florida to win the White House, but that’s a lifetime away, politically.

Democrats and immigrant rights groups today are targeting Colorado as the one place where they can make Republicans suffer for their inaction on immigration. “The national focus of the immigration reform community is on Colorado,” said Patty Kupfer, managing director of the immigrant rights group America’s Voice. “This is where we’re throwing down.”

They’ll focus their efforts on the Senate battle between Republican U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner and Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Udall and the congressional race, one of the most competitive in the nation, pitting Republican incumbent Rep. Mike Coffman against former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, a Democrat.

On Friday, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a prominent Democratic congressman from Illinois who is active on immigration issues, appeared at a press conference in Denver with Colorado’s two Democratic senators to mark the one-year anniversary of the failed Senate bill. He castigated House Republicans for their inaction and did not spare Udall’s challenger, Gardner.

“It’s not enough for you to simply say the right thing,” Gutierrez said of Gardner. “You have to do the right thing.”

He was referencing Gardner’s statements in support of the idea of an immigration overhaul, including granting citizenship for people brought here illegally as children who serve in the military. Immigrant rights advocates note that Gardner has stopped short of supporting the Senate bill or other methods of extending citizenship and voted for legislation to repeal President Barack Obama’s executive action that allows people brought here illegally as children to work legally in the U.S.

Immigrant rights groups and the Udall campaign have hammered Gardner almost daily. On Thursday, activists held a sit-in in Gardner’s district office for several hours.

Gardner spokesman Alex Siciliano noted that Gardner has testified about the importance of an immigration overhaul while sitting next to Gutierrez at the House Judicial Committee. “Nearly a year ago Cory testified alongside Congressman Gutierrez as he urged his colleagues — Republican and Democrat — to fix our broken immigration system. Sen. Udall and his allies should be ashamed that they are distorting a record that they once embraced.”

Coffman has made a dramatic reversal on immigration since his district was redrawn in 2010. Before, he backed a proposal requiring all ballots be printed only in English and praised former congressman and immigration firebrand Tom Tancredo. Now, his new district is 20 percent Hispanic and he is studying Spanish and backing citizenship for some people brought here illegally as children. But critics note he, like Gardner, voted to repeal Obama’s executive action and he doesn’t back the Senate bill.

On Friday, Romanoff led a group of immigrant youths who would be eligible for Obama’s special immigration dispensation, a group known as dreamers, on a march to Coffman’s district office to protest the congressman’s unwillingness to support the Senate bill.

“If I were a member of Congress,” Romanoff said in an email to The Associated Press, “I would sign a discharge petition and bring a vote on immigration reform to the House floor — instead of voting, as Congressman Coffman has repeatedly done, to start the deportation of dreamers.”

Coffman’s office dismissed the protest. “Fixing our broken immigration system will take hard work, not political stunts,” Coffman spokesman Tyler Sandberg said, noting that Gutierrez has praised Coffman as a Republican whom he could work with on the issue.

___

Follow Nicholas Riccardi on Twitter at https://twitter.com/NickRiccardi

• Politics & Government
• Immigration Issues
• Colorado
• Mike Coffman
• Cory Gardner
• Mark Udall

Rick Perry has been governor of the nation’s second most populous state since December 2000. In 2012, he briefly ran for the Republican presidential nomination. He was the guest at a June 19 Monitor luncheon for reporters.

On the surge of unaccompanied children from Central America entering the US: 

“This unaccompanied alien children issue … has the potential to be an absolute catastrophe, a humanitarian catastrophe…. I consider it to be a failure of diplomacy by the United States.” 

Recommended: Can immigration reform pass? Five senators to watch.

On prospects for immigration reform:

“Immigration reform is down the list of things you have to do…. The American people do not trust the federal government until they secure the border … with boots on the ground, with strategic fencing in the metropolitan areas, with technology.” 

On his 2012 run for the White House:

“I am glad I ran in 2012 – as frustrating, as painful, and as humbling as that experience was…. Preparation is the single most important lesson that I learned.”

Why he is considering another run:

“Whether I decide to make a run for the presidency or not, I hope to stay engaged … being a person of influence in some form or fashion.”

On the recent Environmental Protection Agency proposal to regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants:

“It will cause huge economic impact on this country … based on … science that is not settled yet on the issue of CO2…. Calling CO2 a pollutant is doing a disservice to the country.”

On his statement to a San Francisco audience suggesting homosexuality was like alcoholism:

“I readily admit, I stepped right in it….”

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As a seemingly unending phalanx of women and children continues to try to cross into the US from Central America, President Obama has only a few politically unappetizing options left on the table for how to ease a humanitarian crisis that critics say is at least partly his own making.

Fifty thousand people – mostly women with small children and unaccompanied alien children (UACs) – have crossed the Rio Grande River in south Texas this year, and another 40,000 are expected by October. The vast majority are from noncontiguous countries such as Honduras and Guatemala, which means US officials can’t just turn them back at the border. Instead, these women and children are piling up in US detention centers and being released on their own recognizance, with a promise to return to immigration court in months or years.

Most immediately, the crisis has stalled momentum on Capitol Hill toward immigration reform. House Republicans are taking the surge of undocumented women and children as proof that the US border is too porous to even start talking about a path to legal status or citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the US.

Recommended: Could you pass a US citizenship test?

But the situation also gives Mr. Obama a new reason to use his executive powers to bypass a hostile House of Representatives, possibly by expanding his 2012 order that allows thousands of illegal immigrants who came to the US before the age of 16 to avoid deportation and work legally. A new executive order, for example, could expand eligibility to other classes of immigrants, including parents of these so-called Dreamers. 

Democrats began pushing that option this week, arguing that Republicans have declared immigration reform “dead” by not offering up a bill, thus forcing Obama’s hand to act unilaterally. The Democratic-controlled Senate approved a bipartisan immigration reform bill a year ago Friday, but the House has not taken it up.

“It’s fair to say the White House and the president have been pretty disappointed,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday on MSNBC. “We’re not going to just sit around and wait interminably for Congress.”

Meanwhile, the border situation remains fluid and politically explosive. At stake are not only the future prospects of thousands of illegal immigrants, but also perhaps the 2014 elections, in which scenes from an unsettled border may inflame an already-passionate Republican base and possibly tip control of the Senate away from Democrats.

“The timing here couldn’t be worse for the broader immigration debate – both in terms of the administration’s ability to tell the story about how the border is more secure and it’s time to move on to broader reforms … and the fact that there’s a narrative emerging that previous administrative actions are contributing to unauthorized migrant children arriving here,” says Marc Rosenblum of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in Washington.

In addition, some conservatives have characterized the situation as a setup. The administration, they say, purposely set the migration surge into motion to create a border crisis that Obama and Democrats could cite to expand DACA and take other unilateral executive actions. (Along those lines, the conservative Drudge Report had this headline: “Nancy Pelosi to greet new arrivals at border.” The House minority leader’s office on Friday confirmed that she will be touring the South Texas Detention Facility, as reported, but that she will not be meeting with the children.”)

Such suspicions have transformed the border crisis into a Republican rallying cry, including alarms over disease, gangs, and economic harm to American workers.

Moreover, according to Eli Kantor, an immigration attorney in Beverly Hills, Calif., Obama appears to be winking at Hispanic immigrants. For example, while Obama warned Central Americans this week that their children will be sent back if they cross the border, he also earlier appropriated $2 million for legal groups to help make asylum claims for children who have managed to arrive there.

“The president is talking out of both sides of his mouth,” says Mr. Kantor.

Any citizen of a noncontiguous nation who manages to sneak into the United States can request asylum once apprehended. The United Nations has estimated that two-thirds of the arriving unaccompanied minors may have a case, and US immigration judges, on average, give asylum to about half of seekers, on the basis of their individual stories.

The crisis has begun to take a political toll on prospects for Obama’s immigration reform strategy. The president met with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson this week to mull over his options, even as word leaked out that the administration may stay its hand on possible expansion of executive orders on immigration, so as not to rile Republicans too much before the midterm elections.

Obama “really is in a very tight place,” Doris Meissner, director of immigration policy at the Migration Policy Institute, told the Washington Times. “It’s virtually an impossible situation. It is not a situation that in any way respects policy and reasonable discourse. It’s entirely politics.”

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