Obama could end the border crisis tomorrow if he wanted

Yes, current immigration law as written does require ICE to process OTM migrants. But current immigration law also requires ICE to deport illegal immigrants found inside the United States. If Obama can ignore current immigration law on deportations, he can also ignore the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. In other words, if Obama’s DACA program and other lax immigration enforcement policies are legal, then it is also legal for him to turn away those migraines flooding the border today.

But Obama does not want to solve the current border crisis. He wants the crisis to get bigger so he can use it to force the Republican Congress to negotiate on immigration. That is why he is asking for a change to the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Obama believes that if he can get House Republicans to change that law, then Democrats can tack on their much larger amnesty to the bill when it goes through the Senate.

Republicans can not play Obama’s selective enforcement game. Obama unilaterally rewrote immigration law into this crisis, he can unilaterally rewrite himself out of it.