A recent blitz of measures has antagonized immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters, who have opened a national campaign against them, including small street protests in New York and Los Angeles last week.

The administration recently undertook audits of employee paperwork at hundreds of businesses, expanded a program to verify worker immigration status that has been widely criticized as flawed, bolstered a program of cooperation between federal and local law enforcement agencies, and rejected proposals for legally binding rules governing conditions in immigration detention centers.
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“We are expanding enforcement, but I think in the right way,” Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, said in an interview…

But advocates for immigrants said the new agreement did not include strong protections against ethnic profiling. They were surprised, they say, that Ms. Napolitano did not terminate the cooperation agreement with the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., Joe Arpaio, who calls himself the “toughest sheriff in America.” Latino groups in Arizona have accused Mr. Arpaio of using the program to harass Hispanic residents.