Deferred deportation program

In Chicago alone, about 5, undocumented youths were reportedly lined up that day at the Navy Pier, holding a numbered piece of paper and a folder of documents in their hands.

At St. New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn joined advocates and supporters to help the thousands gain an opportunity to live, work and get an education in this country. However, Sarala, 25, an immigrant from South Asia, said in an interview that she is reluctant to apply for now.

She explained that a few months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Department of Homeland Security required certain immigrants of Arab and South Asian countries to register under the U. Patriot Act II. After families complied, some who overstayed their visas were placed under deportation proceedings. Ideally, these young immigrants would gain legal protection if the DREAM Act or a broader immigration reforms are passed, he said.

The letters also said immigrants who are not authorized to remain in the country should leave within about a month or face deportation. The immigrants granted this protection under humanitarian grounds would not be prioritized for removal by the government. USCIS has said it has received about 1, deferred action requests a year, but that the "majority" have been denied. ICE has said its agents have the discretion to determine which individuals will be prioritized for deportation.

Along with their arguments that the decision to scrap the program will jeopardize the lives of vulnerable immigrants and children, Democrats and immigrant advocates have lambasted the administration for not notifying the public or Congress about the shift in policy. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Daniel Ramirez Medina, 23, on Friday, even though he has not committed a crime and is authorized to work and live in the United States, according to the petition.

The program allows immigrants who were brought into the country illegally as children to remain and work in the United States. Ramirez came to the United States when he was 7 years old. The Feb. Deferred action was a longstanding cornerstone of American immigration policy decades before the Obama Administration made its executive action announcement in November DHS and its predecessors, including United States Immigration and Naturalization Service INS , have been deporting unauthorized immigrants for more than a century and have applied discretion to determine whether to pursue or defer particular deportations during that time.

In the immigration context, prosecutorial discretion may be exercised at any stage of an immigration case. Some experts credit the case of John Lennon of Beatles fame with bringing the doctrine to prominence, after his immigration attorney successfully persuaded the INS to formally grant him deferred action in the early s. This status represented the lowest possible priority for the INS action, and was traditionally given to undocumented immigrants for whom departure from the United States would result in extreme hardship.

Although INS officials regularly designated low-priority cases in this manner, effectively halting deportation for these otherwise deportable immigrants, it did so under a veil of secrecy and declined to even admit such a practice existed. In addition to deferred action, immigration authorities may exercise prosecutorial discretion in other ways, including decisions to terminate or administratively close removal proceedings, to grant stays of removal, or to decline to issue a charging document.

Today, immigration officials commonly grant deferred action in individual cases, often for humanitarian purposes, and occasionally they apply deferred action to provide discretionary relief from deportation to individuals falling under specific categories. However, an unauthorized immigrant can also apply for this relief by submitting a written request to USCIS disclosing why he or she is seeking deferred action, together with other supporting documentation, proof of identity, and other evidence.

Ad hoc deferred action is most commonly granted for humanitarian reasons, such as when undocumented parents are permitted to remain in the United States to care for their sick U.