“It’s not fun to enforce immigration laws,” Felicia Escobar, a senior policy adviser on President Obama’s domestic policy council, said at New York’s Hispanic Community Action Summit.
After the feds announced Tuesday they deported an all-time high number of people last fiscal year – 396,906 – a White House official went on the defensive at a local confab to court Latino voters.
“It’s not fun to enforce immigration laws,” Felicia Escobar, a senior policy adviser on President Obama’s domestic policy council, said at New York’s Hispanic Community Action Summit.
Escobar told the local Latino leaders who gathered at Baruch College in Manhattan that Obama wants immigration reform, but is obligated to enforce current laws.
“We all think that the laws should be changed and the system is broken,” she said at the event, the third such forum the White House has hosted nationwide.
Of those who were deported during fiscal year 2011, which ended Oct. 1, 55% had a criminal record – up from 31% in 2008, Escobar said. The numbers included more than 1,100 who had a murder conviction on their rap sheet and more than 5,800 convicted sex offenders, according to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
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