While even such a conservative stalwart as The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page asks for comprehensive immigration reform and a stop to the Bush-era enforcement-only approach, the Obama administration’s chief of immigration enforcement has reiterated this week the government’s commitment to a hard-line approach.

At the same time, Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano will host a meeting on immigration Thursday at the White House “with advocates, religious groups, businesses and law enforcers,” The Associated Press reported.

These latest developments seem to continue the Obama administration’s pattern of talking about reform while acting on enforcement.

John Morton, ICE chief. (Photo: ice.gov)

“We will try to apply immigration laws in a tough, smart and thoughtful manner,”* said John Morton, assistant secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), during a visit to Los Angeles, according to a Spanish-language article in La Opinión by Feet in 2 Worlds contributor Pilar Marrero.

Morton signaled there will not be a stop to immigration raids.

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President Barack Obama has now made official something that had looked more and more likely ever since he took office: that, because he has too much to deal with, immigration reform won’t happen this year. For pro-immigration and Hispanic advocates, this is a clear backtracking on the president’s campaign promise and, while some try to keep a hopeful outlook, others are starting to use the “B” word: betrayal.

“This is a reversal of his campaign promise to pass immigration reform in 2009,” wrote Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Wisconsin nonprofit Voces de la Frontera in the Huffington Post. “Patience for 2010 is hard to come by when the new administration persists with an enforcement-only strategy that Obama criticized during the campaign trail.

“Both represent a betrayal to Latino voters who were a key constituency in delivering the presidency and a majority of Democrats to the U.S. Congress.

A week before the presidential election, Obama told La Opinión he was "committed" to putting together "a recipe" for immigration reform "starting in my first year" in the presidency.

Obama never promised to pass an immigration bill in 2009; he always talked about dealing with the issue in 2009. (Anxious voters probably did not stop to weigh the nuance in his carefully chosen words.) But in addition to the matter of Congress passing (or not) a reform bill, advocates are starting to conclude that the candidate who ran on “Hope” and “Change” is not that different from his predecessor in the White House, whose approach to immigration was about strict enforcement and constant talk of the war on terror.

Responding to comments by Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano, Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, told The New York Times, “She’s increasing enforcement of laws that President Obama and she have both said are broken, and the result is going to be a lot of human misery.”

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NEW YORK — Local immigration activists plan to demonstrate against U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano Wednesday morning when she comes to the city to deliver a speech on terrorism, in what may be the first significant protest by presumed Obama administration allies against a member of the president’s cabinet.  (Editor’s note: We previously reported incorrectly that the demonstration was scheduled for Thursday.  We regret the error.)

A previous demonstration by New York immigration groups, on May Day. (Photo: Maibe Gonzalez Fuentes)

Several pro- immigration groups are organizing a demonstration and press conference at the Council on Foreign Relations, where Napolitano will deliver a speech titled “Common Threat, Collective Response: Protecting Against Terrorist Attacks in a Networked World,” which will be broadcast live on the web.

The groups plan to protest Homeland Security’s “backward policies such as the implementation of e-Verify and the expansion of 287(g)” (a program that deputizes local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws) said Norman Eng, a New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) spokesman. The demonstration comes on the heels of the release last week of a report that found Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a DHS agency, violated the Constitution by conducting home raids without warrants and appropriate documentation under the Bush administration.

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A change in policy spearheaded by the Obama administration toward victims of domestic violence seeking asylum in the U.S. has anti-domestic violence and immigrant advocates cautiously celebrating. It’s one of a series of actions by the administration that suggest a new approach to immigration laws and has advocates anxious to see what follows

Domestic disturbance, by Nathalie Renaud/Flickr - Click to visit

The latest sign surfaced last week when the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered an immigration judge to further review the case of a battered Mexican woman who filed a petition for asylum in California, arguing that she moved to the U.S. to escape severe violence by her common-law husband in Guanajuato, Mexico. The New York Times’ Julia Preston described the case in detail here.

Lawyers and women’s rights advocates have argued that physical and sexual abuse victims should be counted as one of the groups protected by American asylum law, which holds that people seeking the status of refugee must demonstrate a fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or “membership in a particular social group.”

“The truth is that this social group is consistent with the intent and legal principles of asylum law and the protection of persecuted individuals, and we should welcome the administration’s position,” Bitta Mostofi, a staff attorney for Safe Horizon’s Immigration Law Project wrote in an e-mail. Safe Horizon is the largest provider of support services for victims of domestic violence in the country. (more…)