In a blog post titled “This
is What Deportation Looks Like,” The Nation’s Aura
Bogado relays the story of Edi Arma, a father of three facing
deportation after a traffic stop in 2009 put him on the radar:

Edi Arma, who’s lived in Phoenix, Arizona for thirteen
years, is a Guatemalan immigrant fighting deportation. He was
originally placed in immigrant detention after a traffic stop in
2009. Arma explained to officials that he’s afraid that his family
will be killed if they return to Guatemala. Nevertheless, he was
issued a deportation order, which he ignored because he wants to
stay with his wife and three children—one of which suffers from
severe asthma.

Arma’s case appears to fit the description for relief under
the prosecutorial
discretion memo issued by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement Director John Morton. Issued in June 2011, the memo
makes clear that agents can exercise broad flexibility when
choosing to seek deportation. Arma’s supporters point out that he
has no criminal history, he’s a breadwinner who cares for all his
three children and he faces immediate danger if he’s sent to
Guatemala—where his own brother was killed just a few years ago.
 

It looks like Arma’s story is a good example, too, of the
fundamental problem of a government that rules not just through
law, but through policies, procedures, waivers and exemptions
emanating from an ever-growing bureaucracy. President Obama excuses
this by saying that Congress won’t work with him or that he can’t wait for
Congress. John Kerry amazingly even deployed the excuse of
Congressional gridlock as to
why the president can go bomb wherever he pleases. But it’s the
president’s job to work with Congress, not around it.

Of course, it’s been decades since comprehensive immigration
reform last happened, and there’s blame enough for both sides. But
President Obama appears to have had ignored legislative attempts at
immigration reform in favor of ruling through the bureaucracy of
the executive branch. Of note, too, is that Obama
did his part to help sink the last attempt at comprehensive
immigration reform, President Bush’s in 2007, when Obama “pulled
off a trifecta: appeasing Big Labor while telling Latinos he
supported the bill and blaming Republicans for its failure,”

according to the Wall Street Journal. It should sound
familiar.