President Obama, attempting to appease illegal immigrants fearful of being deported, promised “consequences” Wednesday for immigration officials not following new federal guidelines for choosing whom to remove from the country.
“There are going to be some jurisdictions and there may be [an] individual ICE official or Border Control agent not paying attention to our new directives,” Obama said in a town hall Wednesday organized by MSNBC and Telemundo. “But they’re going to be answerable to the head of Homeland Security because he’s been very clear about what our priorities will be.”
Since a Texas federal judge effectively blocked Obama’s plans to spare millions of illegal immigrants from deportation, Obama has labored to convince some that his administration will focus on deporting those who committed violent crimes and recent border crossers.
Some undocumented immigrants have been afraid to sign up for Obama’s deportation relief over fears that the program will be overturned either by the courts or a future Republican president.
In the meantime, Obama said his administration would continue to take a lighter approach to choosing whom to deport.
“The bottom line is I’m using all the legal power invested in me in order to solve this problem,” he said at the Miami event.
“If somebody’s working for ICE,” the president added, “and they don’t follow the policy, there’s going to be consequences to it.”
