The Daily Caller: The Trump Administration Has Increased Immigration Enforcement Through This One Key Action

IRLI In The News

July 7, 2017

By Alex Pfeiffer

The Trump administration has ended a form of prosecutorial discretion that was prevalent during the Obama administration to make it easier to deport illegal immigrants.

Prosecutorial discretion generally refers to the ability of prosecutors to prioritize certain cases due to operational constraints. This was used by the Obama administration to enact out its immigration policy, specifically by prioritizing the deportation of gang members, criminal aliens, and very recent entries. Under this policy, immigration attorneys could make the case that their clients fell within the non-enforcement categories and thus should not be deported.

A May email from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s office of the chief counsel in Baltimore to an immigration attorney obtained by TheDC stated that prosecutorial discretion will no longer be “triggered by an affirmative request.” An ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez told The Daily Caller last week, this meant that ICE is no longer entertaining requests of prosecutorial discretion from attorneys representing illegal immigrants. … Read the full story by Alex Pfeiffer.

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