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This chapter examines the role of prosecutorial discretion in immigration matters during the Obama administration. It analyzes several related memoranda issued by DHS during this period, including a 2010 Priorities Memo describing ICE’s civil enforcement priorities and a 2011 Prosecutorial Discretion Memo known as the “Morton Memo,” after the former head of ICE John Morton. This chapter also summarizes the events that influenced the administration to take a strong position on prosecutorial discretion and eventually to create the DACA program. These events included the 2010 failure of the DREAM Act in the Senate and a record number of deportations involving humanitarianconcerns. This chapter also considers why prosecutorial discretion was divisive among legislators, policymakers, and immigration advocates during this time. Finally, this chapter examines the relationship between the failure of congressional reforms and the role that prosecutorial discretion can play in compensating for this failure.

Chapter 6 describes the efforts of North Carolina’s “Dreamers,” young undocumented people who were part of a national social movement for immigrants’ rights and access to higher education. Dreamers began to mobilize throughout the United States soon after the implementation of local immigration enforcement programs in the mid-2000s and an increase in restrictive state and local policies. The Dreamers’ generation came of age in a society that barred them from attending college, obtaining a driver’s license, applying for jobs with a liveable wage, joining the military, or starting a business. Many of these problems had persisted for decades for immigrants, and Dreamers both engaged in and diverged from a tradition of immigrant advocacy led by Latin Americans and others since the 1980s in North Carolina. Dreamer actions publicly exposed the inequalities and dysfunction in the U.S. immigration and educational system and influenced President Obama to create the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

This chapter examines how the undocumented immigrant youth movement has evoked “coming out as undocumented and unafraid” to mobilize fearful constituents. It discusses the local and state-level legislative changes for which the movement as advocated, including the federal DREAM Act. It argues that while the DREAM Act never passed, the undocumented immigrant youth movement arguably led President Obama to sign the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order in June 2012, which deferred deportation for “Dreamers” who meet certain criteria on a two-year renewable basis. It further argues that the undocumented immigrant youth movement has successfully challenged cultural understandings by offering an alternative image to that of “illegal immigrants” sneaking across the border—that of educated and talented “DREAMers.”

This chapter considers how things have changed in the second half of the Obama administration and under the Trump administration. It shows how transgender rights activists used the politics of coming out to make important gains during Obama’s second term. It also shows that while Trump has worked to reverse LGBTQ+ rights during his presidency, public opinion has shifted in ways that are not easily or quickly reversed. Having felt the relief and joy of exiting the closet, people are not willing to return so easily. Dreamers have likewise refused to retreat into the shadows, and the undocumented immigrant movement continues to encourage coming out as a political strategy. Meanwhile, the Trump administration seems to have provided a catalyst for feminist organizing—including but not limited to the issue of sexual harassment and assault, while also emboldening members of the “alt-right,” or white nationalist movement, to “come out of the woodwork.”

This chapter provides a streamlined account of the laws and policies most relevant to undocumented students in higher education. It begins by first contextualizing the legal discussion on educational institutions within a social justice framework, before describing the legal landscape of the education of undocumented students from K–16 (Kindergarten through College). It explores two specific legal policies that have greatly affected how undocumented students experience higher education: the 1996 Omnibus Immigration Laws and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). It then considers future trends of the legal landscape. It proposes that universities have a role to play in paving a just and compassionate path to undocumented students' access and success in higher education, with or without comprehensive immigration reform. The chapter concludes by posing a challenge to universities—how do your (in)actions on this issue define the ideals of a democratic society and an educational institution committed to social justice?

Heide Castañeda’s chapter highlights the fact that immigrant groups in the United States are not monolithic, but instead stratified by many chaotic bureaucratic categories. Using three case studies derived from longitudinal research in Texas, this chapter illustrates the unanticipated and contradictory effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by examining how immigration categories influenced eligibility and participation. The ACA explicitly excluded more than 11 million undocumented immigrants from coverage and distinguished between “qualified” and “non-qualified” immigrants among those who were considered “lawfully present.” This chapter illustrates the impacts of these exclusions and inclusions. We see how these distinctions produced ripple effects on U.S. citizen children in mixed-status families. In addition, the exclusion of youth holding deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) status—produced through an unusual case of administrative rollback—created a new pattern of formal disenfranchisement, while a loophole allowed some immigrants to qualify for insurance subsidies that U.S. citizens living in the same state could not.

This chapter explores how “illegality” and immigration status exclude undocumented youth from participating in formal political acts, such as voting and running for office, and may prevent them from legally driving and traveling. Undocumented youth also live under the constant threat and fear of deportation. At the same time, youth experience their immigration status in a way that gives them strength to become political participants within their communities, and to challenge restrictive laws through their organizing efforts, particularly as they explore enhanced possibilities for establishing national and transnational connections through the use of the internet and digital media. It examines the ways that undocumented young adults are building and sustaining critical spaces of belonging and resistance within a nation that legally excludes them. By “coming out of the shadows” and creating online petitions to stop deportations, immigrant youth show how being outside of political structures can also create spaces within them..

This chapter chronicles the in-between position of Dreamers, or undocumented migrant youth who were born outside of the United States, but have lived in the United States for many years and consider it home. Although these youth are undeniably transnational, they may find themselves trapped in the United States, unable to leave or safely return to the United States. This landscape changed to some extent with DACA, which created the possibility for young people to travel outside of the United States and return through a process called Advance Parole. However, even if approved, leaving the United States through Advance Parole could result in young people being denied reentry by U.S. officials and thus permanently excluded from the country. Based on ethnographic research with a group of DACAmented migrants who were invited by the Mexican government to visit “their homeland,” this chapter considers border crossings in a time of increasingly blocked movement for the majority of migrant youth. Although all youth were granted permission to travel to Mexico through Advance Parole, their returns—first to Mexico and then to the United States—demonstrate how DACA created a curious status of being both in certain legal categories, but persistently without access to formal national membership. Their liminal position underscores the insecurities of migrant youth more generally.

Margarita Salas-Crespo came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant at the age of ten. Despite language barriers and without access to U.S. citizenship, she excelled in every way. Living as an undocumented migrant through much of her childhood, she later qualified for DACA and was able to pursue an education and career working in and with Latino/a communities. She was the first in her family to graduate from high school and college. Salas-Crespo reflects on her migration to the United States, the challenges she faced as a young undocumented migrant, and the process through which she qualified for DACA. She examines the ways she has been excluded from the nation, but also considers the unique opportunities she and other migrant youth have had—and the critical perspectives they can provide—precisely because of their experience of living in the United States without government authorization. From this vantage point, Salas-Crespo speculates about what the future may hold for her and other young people living in the United States who face increased challenges after losing their DACA status.

This chapter untangles the tensions leading to, and at times undermining, the use of prosecutorial discretion in immigration enforcement. In response to the mounting immigration crisis and in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform, President Obama enlisted prosecutorial discretion; however, in what we call the limits of discretion, this policy soon too came under fire—with ICE officers charging that the initiative went too far and immigrant advocates charging that the policy did not go far enough. The chapter reviews the legal history leading up to the Morton Memos, which serve as the backbone of prosecutorial discretion for the Obama administration, and ends with an examination of prosecutorial discretion in practice, exploring who is being deported and why. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals—DACA—is discussed as an important form of prosecutorial discretion for Dreamers. The chapter contributes to understandings of street-level bureaucrats and the law in action.

From the perspective of immigrant advocates, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has been the high point of the Obama administration. By providing protection against the threat of deportation, as well as conferring a range of social and legal benefits upon the 1.7 million young people potentially eligible for “dacamented” status, we discuss the development and implementation of DACA in the context of legislative inaction, including the failure of Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform or the more limited DREAM Act, and the mobilization of the Dreamer social movement. This chapter addresses why DACA was so necessary by examining the challenges confronting mixed-status families and its impact on child development, early education, and health outcomes, as well as the experiences of the 1.5-generation as they enter adolescence and early adulthood. This chapter concludes with an examination of the structural mechanisms that help and hinder undocumented youth and mixed-status families.

This chapter explains how legal and institutional developments in immigration enforcement coincided with the dramatic acceleration of illegal immigration during the final third of the twentieth century. Together, these legal and demographic phenomena gave rise to a massive shadow immigration system that today operates alongside the formal immigration regime. This shadow system has rendered Congress’s intricate, detailed code of immigration rules increasingly less central to defining the content and character of the immigrant population. Instead, the Executive’s enforcement judgments—decisions about whom to target from the pool of deportable immigrants—have taken center stage. Indeed, the rise of the shadow system has effectively delegated vast screening authority to the President and other executive branch officials—authority that has culminated in events as dramatic as President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The large number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States today amplifies the role of enforcement discretion and further entrenches the shadow immigration system.

This chapter demonstrates how the President’s control over immigration policy depends intimately on the structure and culture of the enforcement bureaucracy. These features of the bureaucracy in turn shape presidential policymaking. In particular, low-level executive branch officials play a crucial role in effectuating the enforcement power, as they are the ones responsible for the daily exercise of discretion within the system. To see how these dynamics have played out within the Executive Branch, the chapter studies the Obama administration’s efforts to centralize enforcement discretion in order to control line-level agents and contrasts those efforts with the early decisions of the Trump administration. It focuses on the attempts by political officials to tame the discretion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. President Obama’s efforts to discipline the decision-making of these line officials culminated in his two signature initiatives designed to insulate upward of five million unauthorized immigrants from removal. The bureaucratic reality of presidential immigration law has been on display equally during President Trump’s administration, including through efforts to centralize control over discretion where doing so has proven necessary to advancing the President’s policy agenda.

This chapter examines the role of prosecutorial discretion in immigration matters during the Obama administration. It analyzes several related memoranda issued by DHS during this period, including a 2010 Priorities Memo describing ICE’s civil enforcement priorities and a 2011 Prosecutorial Discretion Memo known as the “Morton Memo,” after the former head of ICE John Morton. This chapter also summarizes the events that influenced the administration to take a strong position on prosecutorial discretion and eventually to create the DACA program. These events included the 2010 failure of the DREAM Act in the Senate and a record number of deportations involving humanitarianconcerns. This chapter also considers why prosecutorial discretion was divisive among legislators, policymakers, and immigration advocates during this time. Finally, this chapter examines the relationship between the failure of congressional reforms and the role that prosecutorial discretion can play in compensating for this failure.

This chapter presents a data-based portrait of American immigrants. Nearly 44 million immigrants live in the United States, and their health, and that of their children, is directly affected by their legal status and by U.S. policy. Indeed, public policy at both the federal and state levels—including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), changes in “public charge” rules, and eligibility for driver's licenses and prenatal care—are all significant influences on health status and access to care. As such, ensuring that immigrant families are supported requires health care providers, policymakers, and community leaders to acknowledge the myriad factors influencing the health of their immigrant constituents. It is a path that will improve well-being for immigrants, while offering benefits more broadly as people work toward health equity.

During the 1990s and into the 2000s, three basic barriers prevented undocumented youth from achieving major milestones of independence—acquiring a driver’s license, submitting college applications, and working legally. The circumstances repeated again and again in the accounts of undocumented youth. Elioenai Santos recalled, “Living like that is a real problem. It’s a real blow to your self-esteem, because you always feel like you are somehow less. It’s awful to always feel like you’re inferior. You see your friends driving around, traveling to other countries, while I don’t have money to go to school.” Nor could they keep their families together, as everyone felt constantly threatened by separation. The result since the early 2000s has been a growing, powerful movement among undocumented youth to redefine “who belongs” as a citizen in the United States. This chapter explores how the Immigrant Youth Justice League, Freedom University, Cristina Jimenez and United We Dream, and other undocumented and undocuqueer youth immigrant activists have fought for DACA and the DREAM Act and against deportation and the border wall. They have fundamentally challenged all US citizens to reimagine who belongs within the circle of belonging.

This chapter provides a primer on United States immigration policy. It discusses legal admissions policies, border security policies, interior immigration enforcement policies, and immigrant integration policies. The discussion of legal admissions policies focuses on family-based immigration, employment-based immigration, humanitarian immigration (i.e., refugees), temporary H1-B visas (skilled workers), and temporary H2-A visas (agricultural workers). The discussion of border security policies focuses on the origins and the evolution of the powers and the authority of the Border Patrol agency, Operation Gatekeeper, border fencing, and the efficacy of border patrol operations. The discussion of interior immigration enforcement policies focuses on worksite enforcement (i.e., workplace raids), E-Verify, local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement officials, immigration detention, and deportation. The discussion of immigrant integration policies focuses on English-only legislation, birthright citizenship legislation, a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.

This chapter examines variations in diaspora policies across generations and migration status, considering changes in migrants’ precarious status from the perspective of the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program. It focuses on the ways in which the rhetoric and implementation of Mexico’s diaspora programs has adapted focusing on the 1.5 generation, and the ways in which these policies have been challenged by returned migrants. In the context of massive deportations that have coincided with the rise of the Dreamers movement and the implementation of DACA, origin countries’ attempts to engage this group reveal the challenges and contradictions of diaspora policies that offer assistance abroad and expand the concept and practice of extraterritorial membership in specific moments and for particular groups, but have limited resources and opportunities for those same populations upon their return to their country of origin.

This conclusion reflects upon President Trump’s stances on immigration and citizenship in the first year of his administration. I frame recent developments in the historical context of a nation that still grapples with the implications of its aspirational heritage as a country of immigrants, even as the U.S. continually backslides into its legacy of multiple discriminations. Though we are in a period of restrictionism, reflected prominently in the Trump administration’s attempts to cancel the DACA program, immigrants continue to resist exclusion and to serve as workers, parents, volunteers, and soldiers. This chapter concludes by focusing on the moral claims of DACA recipients to inclusion in the United States. It argues that like their native-born peers and younger siblings, they are already Americans by virtue of their upbringing, education, and formative experiences in this country, and they should be permanently protected from removal from the United States.