White House unleashes federal agents against illegal immigrants

Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly officially unleashed federal agents this week to begin arresting and deporting more illegal immigrants, unshackling the handcuffs the Obama administration had imposed and putting millions of people in the country without authorization at risk.

Officials waved aside immigrant rights groups’ warnings of quick mass deportations and said the biggest changes, including making illegal immigrants wait in Mexico for their cases to be decided, will take time.

But the gist of the changes, laid out in two memos from Mr. Kelly, is to push immigration enforcement, which under President Obama had been mostly confined to the border region, south into Mexico and north to cover the interior of the U.S.

That will likely change the risk calculations for immigrants in the country illegally, those considering making the journey north and Mexican authorities who often turn a blind eye or even aid the migrants along the way.

Dreamers, the young adult illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and who have kept clean legal records, are still generally exempted from deportations, as they were under Mr. Obama.

Mr. Kelly revoked the Obama administration’s stricter set of priorities for deportation, which required felony convictions or multiple misdemeanors, and replaced them with a broader set of priorities that targets anyone arrested for a crime, as well as those convicted.

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