What to be thankful for in 2015…
Hello!
With Thanksgiving nearly here, and the end of the year quickly approaching, it is a good time to reflect on what we should be thankful for this year. Last year, on November 20, 2014, President Obama announced an executive action that would protect undocumented parents of US citizen children from deportation and expand DACA to include children who came to the USA since 2010. Sadly, today those actions still sit tied up in Court, and hopefully now in the hands of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the USA.
DHS and the immigration courts have been trying to use their prosecutorial discretion to administratively close as many cases as they can that are not an “enforcement priority”. While this process may be arbitrary and discretionary on DHS’s part, it actually has helped close a lot of cases for families, saving them significant heart break. While DHS cannot legally close cases based on DAPA, they are doing the best they can to help keep non-enforcement priority families together.
So, while DAPA-eligible parents and expanded-DACA eligible children are still waiting for protection for deportation, they are still here with their families. We need to be thankful for the little victories, such as prosecutorial discretion, and look forward to the new year. 2016 holds many promises, and hopefully one of those will be the enactment of DAPA and expanded DACA, keeping families together.