It's not just conservatives who are up in arms about the Obama administration's new policy. Deportation policy angers bloggers

The Obama administration’s new deportation policy is whipping up conservatives and liberals in the blogosphere — and leaving many from both sides angry over the president’s approach to immigration law.

Under the new plan, there will be case-by-case reviews of the approximately 300,000 illegal immigrants who are facing expulsion in an effort to remove low-priority cases from the deportation pipeline and place the focus on those with criminal convictions. Those who are low priorities for deportation — such as young people who were brought to the U.S. as children, military veterans and spouses of military personnel — will no longer be targeted and may have the opportunity to apply for a work permit.


Writing at Red State, conservative commentator Daniel Horowitz called it an unprecedented move that usurps congressional authority

“What other laws will this president refuse to execute faithfully? Will he direct the EPA to enforce cap and trade, or instruct the DOI to block the issuance of drilling permits? Oh, he is already doing that,” Horowitz wrote. “And, most importantly, if the president is above the law, then why should any of us be compelled to adhere to laws that we regard as undesirable or unfair? If Obama can refuse to enforce his core constitutional duties, why can’t we disregard his individual insurance mandate — a law that is an anathema to the constitution?”

And it’s not just conservatives who are up in arms — many immigration advocates expressed anger over the lack of fundamental reform.

Presente.org co-founder Roberto Lovato — while acknowledging the policy will likely benefit a number of people — wrote at the Huffington Post that Latino voters won’t simply forget what he charged is Obama’s failure to live up to his promise of comprehensive immigration reform.

“Bubbling beneath [Thursday’s] announcement is an immigration crisis that will continue to widen and deepen the campaign crisis we see in news stories featuring pictures of angry Latino voters carrying colorful placards saying ‘Obama is Separating More Families Than Bush’ and ‘Stop Secure Communities NOW!’,” he wrote.

Lovato wrote that Obama and his advisers have “taken to aggressively repeating misleading statements about the immigrants that their Administration is raiding, terrorizing and deporting: that they are criminals. Continuing to repeat such false claims when the Obama Administration’s own records show that most people being deported have no criminal record will only result in more protesters at campaign offices, more petitions to the White House and more voters telling pollsters that they might stay home on election day 2012.”

The only way to revive Latino interest in Obama’s reelection, Lovato said, would be to end the controversial Secure Communities enforcement program in which local police share fingerprints of detainees with federal authorities and immigration officials.

Several liberal bloggers, however, praised the move, with immigradvocate calling it a “courageous decision” at the Daily Kos.

“If we can’t have Comprehensive Immigration Reform because the Republicans don’t want to do anything that could help immigrants, at least we can have a logical enforcement policy,” immigradvocate wrote.

But for conservative commentator Katie Pavlich, writing at Townhall’s The Tipsheet, the policy is anything but logical: “The problem is, all illegal aliens do have criminal records. Entering the United States without permission is a crime.”