White House Vows to Stop Deporting Kids

Sen. Rick Durbin says, young illegal immigrants "should not be punished for their parents’ mistakes”

Advocates of the Dream Act will be thrilled to hear that the Obama administration is putting the brakes on deporting younger illegal immigrants. The New York Times reports:

White House and immigration officials said they would exercise "prosecutorial discretion" to allow these people to stay in the country while the government focused its enforcement efforts on higher-priority cases involving criminals and people who had flagrantly violated immigration laws.

President Obama is, in effect, doing administratively what he could not persuade Congress to do--allowing the secretary of homeland security to provide relief to a select group of students who are here illegally but show great promise.

To address the change, the Department of Homeland security will review all of the 300,000 pending cases. The new policy will apply to young immigrants who "had come to the United States as young children and graduated from high school or served in the armed forces." Does this mean Jose Antonio Vargas is off the hook?