Contrary to the assertions of overreach by House Republicans, President Obama's executive actions on immigrants actually don't go far enough.
When he announced in November measures to extend temporary relief from deportation to millions of unauthorized immigrants, Obama stressed that his administration would focus on removing "felons, not families."
However, the president's actions applied only to parents who have lived in the United States for more than five years, have children who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, are free of certain criminal convictions and are physically present in the United States. At the same time, he directed immigration agents to fast track the deportation of people apprehended at the border.
But many of the immigrants deported at the border are parents seeking to rejoin family still in the United States. A Human Rights Watch analysis of government data found that border authorities capture and deport about 50,000 parents of U.S. citizens each year.
A lot of them would qualify for relief under Obama's plan - if they were in the United States. Instead, they face deportation and even jail time.
The Obama administration has deported more than 2 million people over the past six years. Very few are felons. Many, like Yolanda Varona, who was deported in 2010 after 14 years in the United States, had no criminal convictions at all.
She does have family in the United States, though, including children and grandchildren who are American citizens. "I feel like I'm dying every day my children are alone over there," Varona told me recently. She now lives in a migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, just a few miles from the U.S. border.
Nor is deportation the only hazard immigrants with U.S. children face. Many keep trying to enter the United States - "as an act of love," to quote former Florida Gov. and presidential aspirant Jeb Bush - despite the risks of prosecution and imprisonment for the federal felony crime of illegal re-entry.
This kind of injustice could be avoided if parents of U.S. citizens were given the opportunity to explain to an immigration judge how deep their roots go in the United States. But most are deported under two summary procedures - expedited removal and reinstatement of removal - that give them no such chance.
And thanks to harsh federal deportation laws that tack on long-term or even lifetime bans against returning legally, many immigrants remain stranded abroad, with no lawful way to rejoin their loved ones in the United States.
The Obama administration should stop summarily deporting these parents and let them explain their family ties. It should also drastically roll back harmful prosecutions for illegal entry and re-entry, which taken together are now the most prosecuted federal crimes.
But these executive measures would be only temporary. A more comprehensive, durable fix requires legislation from Congress.
Some might say it's naive, in today's polarized political climate, to call on Congress to provide a path to permanent legal status for unauthorized immigrants and a way for them to rejoin their families. But in 2013, 68 senators from both sides of the aisle voted to do just that.
Obama asked in his November speech: "Are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents' arms? Or are we a nation that values families, and works together to keep them together?"
The choice is up to us.
