Bernie Sanders wants to bring back deported immigrants

Alan Gomez | USA TODAY

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders is proposing a plan that would bring back undocumented immigrants who have been deported from the U.S. if they have close relatives living in the country.

The idea was part of the Vermont independent's wide-ranging immigration plan released on Tuesday that includes many ideas shared by his Democratic rivals, including more protections for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. But Sanders' plan is the first to extend protections to immigrants who have already been sent back to their home countries.

The proposal takes advantage of an existing tool called "parole in place." In the vast majority of cases, undocumented immigrants who want to apply to become legal residents in the U.S. must return to their home country to start the process. But the Department of Homeland Security has the power to grant "parole in place" status to some immigrants "for urgent humanitarian reasons," which would allow them to stay in the U.S. while their application is being considered.

Sanders' plan would ask Homeland Security officials to bring back people who have been "wrongfully deported." In an email Wednesday, his campaign said that would include undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children, or have spouses, children or parents who are U.S. citizens.

His campaign said it had no estimate of how many people could be returned to the country under the plan. But a report from Human Rights Watch that analyzed deportations over a two-year period in 2011 and 2012 found that more than 100,000 parents of U.S. citizens were deported during that time from the border region alone.

"This would certainly push the envelope," said Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Washington. "It's a step we haven't seen taken."

The Obama administration has used parole in place for years to protect the families of members of the U.S. military. In a memo released in 2013, Homeland Security instituted a policy that allows undocumented spouses, children and parents of servicemembers to remain in the U.S. while they apply to become legal residents. The memo said that was needed to reduce the stress on military personnel worried about their relatives being deported.

The administration expanded that program in 2014, extending parole in place to the families of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents who "seek to enlist" in the military. That memo justified the expansion by saying it would help recruitment efforts by the different branches of the military.

In Sanders' case, he argues that bringing back deported immigrants is needed to keep together family units of all kinds. Immigration activists have long argued that the country's deportation apparatus often breaks up families, deporting parents of U.S.-born children, separating siblings and creating fractured family units on both sides of the border. But they have focused on stopping future deportations, not bringing back people who have already been deported.

"The United States must do the right thing and guarantee the swiftest possible reunification of these broken families," Sanders' immigration plan reads.

Sanders' immigration policy puts him beyond what any other Democratic candidate has proposed. The party's front-runner, Hillary Clinton, has endorsed the president's attempts to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation through executive authority and said she would expand the pool of immigrants protected by those actions. Former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley supports that idea and has also proposed expanding the use of parole in place as a way to prevent breaking up families already in the U.S.

But neither of them have gone as far as Sanders' new proposal.

"It puts him all the way at the left of this spectrum," Rosenblum said.

Republicans have been having a different debate, with front-runner Donald Trump pushing for the mass deportation of all 11 million undocumented immigrants. Other GOP candidates have mocked that proposal, saying it's too costly, too harsh and nearly impossible to accomplish. Instead, candidates like neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida governor Jeb Bush have considered ways to allow undocumented immigrants to remain in the country as guest workers, but not let them receive full legal status or U.S. citizenship.

"Establishing an immigration policy that stops the criminalization of communities of color and keeps families together will be a top priority of my administration," Sanders wrote in his immigration plan. "Our immigration policy will put the sanctity of families at the forefront and will be grounded in civil, human, and labor rights."

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