Jacobo Gabriel-Tomas was waiting in Dallas for a connecting flight back to Guatemala, convinced he had exhausted all options to avoid deportation. That's when the Worthington father of five children born in the United States got a call from an immigration attorney urging him to return to Minnesota.
Two weeks later, President Obama signed an executive order that gives some immigrants facing imminent deportation hope for a last-minute reprieve. Parents of U.S. citizen children, like Gabriel-Tomas, will be able to apply for temporary permission to stay and work. New deportation priorities will sharpen the focus on serious crimes and national security threats, leaving out immigration offenses like Gabriel-Tomas' decision to defy a deportation order 12 years ago.
But the new deportation guidelines are not as clear-cut as Obama's "felons, not families" catchphrase. What's more, day-to-day decisions will be up to field agents sworn to uphold immigration laws, some of whom have chafed at a recent push to scale back enforcement.
"There's this constant tension between directives coming from Washington and the people on the ground implementing them," said Virgil Wiebe, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas.
A shift was already underway before the president's announcement.
After increasing markedly under Obama, deportations nationally dipped in the past couple of years. Removals coming from the Twin Cities field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were down 40 percent in fiscal year 2013 over 2010, with a much larger share involving immigrants with criminal convictions.
As of November, 14,650 people were in the final stage of their deportation proceedings in the five states the Twin Cities office covers.
No longer an ICE priority?