Lake County murder case brings Obama's immigration policy to the fore

Cleveland.Com

By Stephen Koff

July 29, 2015

Lake County murder case brings Obama's immigration policy to the fore

The case of Juan Emmanuel Razo, an immigrant accused of murder and attempted rape Monday near Cleveland, could magnify the national debate over illegal immigration. The tragic news from Lake County, nearly 30 miles from Cleveland, comes just as Republican presidential candidates prepare to gather in Cleveland Aug. 6 to debate immigration and other issues of the day.

Details of Monday's events are still emerging, but police say that Razo, 35, of Painesville, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, fatally shot a woman at her home, wounded another woman nearby by shooting her in the arm, and attempted to rape a 14-year-old girl.

Police, who arrested Razo Monday and held him on a charge of attempted murder while they investigated the events, said that officers met him at least once before. It was on July 7, in response to a report of suspicious activity, according to the Lake County Sheriff's Office. Chief Deputy Frank Leonbruno said Razo was "in an area he had no permission to be on." He said deputies called the "border patrol," who said there was no reason to hold Razo.

That would appear to reflect a policy, formalized by President Barack Obama in November, of using the Department of Homeland Security's resources for the highest priorities. Those include detaining and deporting violent criminals who are in this country illegally. Other priorities include detaining those engaged in dangerous gang activity or deemed to be threats to national or border security.

But those whose biggest crime is being here illegally are generally let go.

"This is a tragedy that could have, and should have, been prevented," said congressman Dave Joyce, a Republican who represents Lake County and has a district office in Painesville. "As a former prosecutor, I will do everything I can to get to the bottom of this situation and make sure justice is served. We need to enforce our immigration laws that are on the books, not blatantly ignore them. Now, as a result of failed immigration policies by the Obama Administration, an innocent life has been taken. That's unacceptable."

Under current immigration policy, being in the United States without legal status is not a priority for enforcement, detention or deportation. Immigration reform advocates say that prosecuting such offenders would be a waste of money and effort, and it would destroy families who are abiding by this country's other laws.

"And let's be honest," Obama said in November. "Tracking down, rounding up, and deporting millions of people isn't realistic. Anyone who suggests otherwise isn't being straight with you."

Obama's executive actions in November had two primary focuses, one of them centering on keeping families together in the United States, even if parents or children were here illegally. That portion is under challenge in a federal court in Texas, but if Obama prevails, about 5 million people could be protected from deportation.

It is unclear if Razo has children in the United States. If not, his circumstances would fall outside that portion of Obama's immigration actions.

But there is another part of Obama's immigration policy that might have protected Razo from immigration trouble already.

Obama formalized what some say was already a de facto policy at the Department of Homeland Security and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement division. Some immigration experts said that President George W. Bush's administration, too, used the informal policy -- to only detain unauthorized immigrants whose records or behavior suggested they were a threat to others.

Obama, however, made that a formal policy in November.

"The Obama administration's policy on which immigrants to detain has evolved," said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a Cornell University law professor and authority on immigration law. "The administration knows that it doesn't have the money or jail space to detain and deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants. Therefore, since last November it has focused on detaining immigrants who have been convicted of felonies or significant misdemeanors."

Called the Priority Enforcement Program, this prioritized custody and deportation for individuals convicted of "significant criminal offenses," involved in criminal gang activity or deemed a threat to national security, according to Homeland Security guidlines.

Civil immigration offenses alone would not count, and authorities said they would not seek to remove people charged with crimes but not yet convicted.

"In general, our enforcement and removal policies should continue to prioritize threats to national security, public safety and border security," said a Nov. 20 memo from Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

This did not mean the federal government could ignore lesser offenses. But Johnson laid out a set of priorities for dealing with them. A pattern of three or more misdemeanors other than minor traffic violations could count, his memo said. So could domestic violence, sexual abuse, burglary or firearms offenses.

Enforcement therefore would require discretion based on individual circumstances, Johnson said.

Asked about the changes, the White House said in an email to the Northeast Ohio Media Group today: "The President's immigration accountability actions set clear priorities on how to use limited enforcement resources to aggressively focus on the deportation of people who threaten national security, border security and public safety.

"He has directed immigration enforcement to place anyone suspected of terrorism, violent criminals, gang members, and recent border crossers at the top of the deportation priority list."

Just how this affected Razo is not yet known. Officials have said little else about his status. But the charges against him come amid an already high level of political rhetoric on immigration. And the Republicans who feel the strongest are likely to discuss it at their Aug. 6 debate in Cleveland.

Donald Trump, a Republican presidential candidate and real estate billionaire, has already said that Latin American countries sent rapists and other criminals to the United States to immigrate illegally, although he added that many immigrants are law-abiding. A number of other candidates agree that the United States should step up deportation, saying the unauthorized immigrants already broke a federal law: They came to the United States illegally.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, also a presidential candidate, says deporting 11 million people would be unrealistic.

Whether Obama's policies will be blamed for Razo's actions is unknown, but critics of those policies say they should be.

"This is just another incident that shows how reckless and harmful the policy of so-called prioritization is in terms of public safety," said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that wants more enforcement and immigration control.

Groups on both sides of the issue use statistics to make their point.

Grisel Ruiz, a staff attorney at the Immigration Research Center, which supports immigration reform rather than a clampdown, points to statistics showing record numbers of deportations under Obama. That number topped 438,000 in 2013, a steady and dramatic increase since 2003, according to Pew Research Center figures last October.

But Vaughan, whose group favors a vigorous enforcement policy, says the figures mask what's really been happening. Under Obama, she said, the United States shifted its focus to catching more people entering the southern border and deporting them quickly. But deportations "from the interior" -- people caught living illegally deeper within the United States -- have declined, she said. That's been a trend since about 2010, she said.

Supporters of Obama's policies say the president has had to be realistic. There are 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, but Congress has only authorized budgets to remove fewer than 400,000 of them, said Ian Millhiser, an attorney and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, which backs Obama's immigration policies.

Vaughan disagrees.

"They have made a shift in how they are using the resources that Congress gives them," Vaughan said.

The Lake County killing follows a different immigration controversy in San Francisco, where a man who had been deported from the United States five times is accused of murdering a 32-year-old woman on a pier. The man, Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez, had been in the custody of the San Francisco Sheriff's Department on a drug charge. Local authorities decided not to pursue the charge and released him, rather than hold him for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

San Francisco is a so-called sanctuary city, treating unauthorized immigrants as regular residents rather than as criminals. That makes it different from Painesville, where Razo was living. But Razo's case nevertheless could ramp up a similar level of debate.

What happened in Lake County is tragic, Millhiser said. Still, he said, based on the facts he learned from a reporter about the July 7 stop of of Razo, "there was no way they could have known this individual would have committed a crime in the future."

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com