LifeZette -- Brendan Kirby
Chris Chmielenski, director of content and activism for NumbersUSA, said Kelly’s memos give more details to Trump’s executive order. ICE will focus its efforts on criminals and people under orders to leave the country, but officers now have freedom to arrest other people they encounter who are in the country illegally.
“For so long, the people at ICE and CBP had their hands cuffed behind them, and when they were going to deal with the mission of their job,” Spicer said. “The last administration had so many carveouts for who could be and who couldn’t be adjudicated that it made it very difficult for the customs and enforcement people to do their job and enforce the laws of our country.”
Chmielenski said the restrictions Spicer referenced did not come until later in the Obama administration.
“It somewhat resets it to what enforcement was like early in the Obama years and a little bit at the end of the Bush administration,” he said...
Chmielenski said NumbersUSA supports the polices outlined by Kelly. But he added that the organization is disappointed by Trump’s decision — at least for now — not to revoke Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which shields people brought to the United States as children, and Deferred Action for the Parents of Americans, which shields illegal immigrants with U.S.-born children.
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