Obama has facilitated the deportation of 400,000 immigrants each year, a group that is disproportionately male and Latino. This is bad public policy.

First, contrary to what anti-immigrant groups would have you believe, the country is spending more today than it ever has ever on immigration enforcement, a wasteful and terrible use of taxpayer dollars. In fiscal year 2016, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a budget of $64.9 billion, only six percent of which goes to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the component of DHS devoted to customer service and processing immigrants' applications to adjust status.

In fact, the DHS receives more funding than any other federal criminal law enforcement agency. While the Obama policy purports to be targeting only those convicted of a crime with standing deportation orders, as outlined under his new PEP-Comm (Priority Enforcement Program) set of priorities, the reality is that the program incentivizes racist policing and creates a dragnet even for individuals who have never been convicted of a crime.

Second, these policies are destructive to families - 16.6 million individuals live in mixed status families (with at least one unauthorized individual), and middle-of-the-night roundups are causing lasting traumas, especially to children - a fact recognized even by the Department of Justice. Removing primary breadwinners and caregivers creates psychological and economic damage to families. For those deported parents who are left with the choice to either leave behind their native-born and US citizen children, or take them to a country where they often don't know the language and face bureaucratic barriers to full integration and well-being, there can be devastating consequences.

Lastly, Americans should be wary of any policy that expulses individuals without due process. Contrary to popular belief, immigration law is a civil matter. Yet, the number of immigrants in detention centers went from 6,785 in 1995 to 34,000 in 2013. Many of these detention centers are privately run, house women and children, and routinely deny detainees access to counsel. In the recent spate of removals, judges have already halted the deportation of 20 individuals last month who had not been able to exhaust their legal options in the hasty rush to detain and deport.....