Hopes for compassion in the new year

Last June, the hopes of undocumented folks on the verge of being separated from family, friends and livelihood went way up . John Morton, President Obama's director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sent out a memo to his officials across the country asking them to use discretion and concentrate on deporting convicted criminals. Clearly this was meant to put the brakes on deportations that separate families.

That directive is surely making a difference at some times and in some places. But it is being widely overlooked. The buses that regularly take convicted felons to the border continue to also deport great numbers of the very people the Obama administration memo was talking about. (See my December 13 blog entry.)

For now, there is a new pilot program that at least has federal immigration prosecutors going through the files in Baltimore and Denver to find low-priority cases. That program may expand to other cities in mid-January.

In the meantime, the Justice Department's immigration review office has been frozen by a hiring freeze. This means that there is presently such an extreme shortage of immigration judges that the lives almost 300,000 undocumented people are in limbo while their pending cases await a decision.

All the Tea Party-style ranting and raving is bound to increase in the political frenzy that officially begins on Tuesday in Iowa. This will be ever harder on one's ears over the next ten months. But that is nothing compared to the agony of those whose lives and families might be torn apart if they are grabbed on the street or at work by ICE.

Despite this fierce environment, let us hope that in 2012 the voices of compassion and sanity will finally prevail.