Since June 15, the immigration world has largely focused on the impending "deferred action" initiative for individuals who could have qualified for relief under the DREAM Act. Meanwhile, comparatively little attention has been paid to the still ongoing review of more than 300,000 pending removal cases for individuals meriting a favorable exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Although Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has not released official statistics from the review for nearly two months, figures derived from a recent media account indicate that the agency is now offering to close cases at less than half the rate as when the initiative began.
As readers may recall, ICE launched the case-by-case review late last year, nearly six months after Director John Morton issued his now-famous memos on prosecutorial discretion (here and here). To date, according to figures obtained from the Los Angeles Times, agency attorneys have reviewed the files in nearly 360,000 cases and identified approximately 23,000 as provisionally eligible for "administrative closure," for an overall rate of 6.4%. (Note: administrative closure results in the removal of a case from an immigration court's docket, although it may be reactivated at any time upon the government's request. Unlike deferred action, administrative closure provides no independent basis to obtain a work permit.)...