Immigration - Obama Presidency Oral History

But until such a package became law, and in anticipation of future negotiations with Republicans, administration officials were committed to enforcing the country’s existing immigration laws. 

Still, officials recognized that they had significant latitude to define what enforcement meant in practice, and developed policies that used “prosecutorial discretion” to prioritize prosecution of certain undocumented individuals. In a series of memos authored by ICE Director John Morton, the administration called for a focus on recent entrants and undocumented immigrants who posed a particular risk to public safety or national security, and advised law enforcement to exercise “particular care” in cases involving members of low-risk groups. In the project archive, narrators speak widely about the development and implementation of these priorities.

Immigration activists, however, criticized the implementation of the prioritization regime, documenting cases in which immigrants who ought to have been protected under the administration’s guidance were subjected to ICE enforcement actions. In oral history interviews, the leaders of major immigration advocacy organizations reflect on the impact of these actions on communities across the country, and recount their efforts to hold the administration accountable for policy violations. 

During the years of the Obama presidency, undocumented immigrants who had entered the country as children achieved political prominence through their activism and efforts to publicize their experiences growing up undocumented in the United States. These immigrants came to be known as DREAMers, after the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act), which would grant them temporary residency status, employment authorization, and create a path to permanent residency status. 

Successive versions of the DREAM Act had failed since 2001, but campaigners were optimistic about its prospects in the Democratic 111th Congress. Advocates, lawmakers, and White House officials, however, debated whether the DREAM Act ought to be pursued independently, or held as a “sweetener” in a comprehensive bipartisan bill. After Republican victories in the 2010 midterm elections, such a compromise appeared unlikely, and congressional Democrats moved to pass the bill during Congress’ lame duck session. While the DREAM Act passed the House, it died in the Senate. Narrators from Capitol Hill, the White House, and major advocacy organizations discuss these strategic debates, and recount the bill’s defeat in Congress.

After the bill failed, the administration, pushed by advocates and activists, developed administrative actions to extend rights to DREAMers. This process culminated in Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a presidential memorandum Obama announced in June 2012, which became the centerpiece of the administration’s immigration reform effort. The Obama Presidency Oral History collection provides extensive coverage of the development, design, implementation, legality, and politics of DACA, including perspectives from DREAMers, advocates, the White House, federal agencies, and political campaigners.

Parallel to administrative actions like DACA, the administration and congressional Democrats continued to work toward a compromise with Republicans. After Obama’s reelection in 2012, these negotiations gained momentum, and in June 2013, the Senate passed the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, a comprehensive package drafted by a bipartisan “Gang of Eight” Senators. But the House Republican majority refused to act on the legislation, and in June 2014, Speaker John Boehner informed Obama that the bill was dead. In their oral histories, White House operatives and leading congressional Republicans and their staffers narrate the promise and collapse of bipartisan reform, and reflect on the radicalization of the Republican base around immigration.

After the failure of bipartisan reform in the House, Obama announced in the White House Rose Garden that he was “beginning a new effort to fix as much of our immigration system as I can on my own, without Congress.” In their oral histories, narrators reflect on this effort, which included an expansion of DACA—Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA)—that extended new protections to nearly half of the estimated eleven million undocumented immigrants in the US. Like other of the administration’s executive actions, DAPA was challenged in the courts, and ultimately blocked by an injunction in February 2015. 

Throughout the Obama presidency, immigration politics were complicated by events and conditions on the United States’ southern border, and by the movements of refugees and asylum seekers worldwide. The significance of the border reached an apex in mid-2014, when then-unprecedented numbers of women and unaccompanied children entered the United States. In the Obama Presidency Oral History archive, administration officials reflect on their efforts to manage the crisis, while immigration activists and civil rights lawyers criticize the conditions in which migrants were forced to await processing. Narrators also discuss these issues as they manifested in global contexts, including during the Syrian Civil War and 2015 European migrant crisis.

Immigration overlaps and intersects with several other topic areas in the Obama Presidency Oral History collection, including Republican Opposition, Human Rights, and Democrats.