What were the Obama-era ICE prioritization memos and how did they change interior enforcement outcomes?
Executive summary
The Obama-era ICE prioritization memos—chiefly the Morton memos of 2011 and Secretary Jeh Johnson’s DHS/ICE guidance culminating in the November 2014 Priority Enforcement Program (PEP)—sought to concentrate interior enforcement on national-security threats, recent border crossers, and people convicted of serious crimes, while discouraging pursuit of low-priority immigration violators [1] [2]. Those policies coincided with a sharp decline in interior removals and a rebalancing of the criminal profile of those removed, though scholars and critics dispute how consistently ICE adhered to the priorities and what political motives underlay the changes [3] [4] [5].
1. What the memos said and who issued them
Beginning with internal “prosecutorial discretion” guidance and formalized in the 2011 Morton memos and the 2014 DHS memoranda under Secretary Johnson, the administration issued hierarchical priorities: threats to national and border security and public safety first, followed by recent immigration violators and then other violators, alongside new “sensitive locations” protections meant to limit enforcement at schools and churches [1] [2] [6]. The 2014 package also replaced the Secure Communities program with PEP and introduced new detainer forms and agency‑wide guidance meant to apply across DHS components [2].
2. How enforcement outcomes shifted
Empirical outcomes shifted markedly after the policies: interior removals fell substantially from peaks earlier in the decade—illustrative figures show interior removals dropping from roughly 224,000 in FY2011 to about 65,000 in FY2016 under strict adherence and expanded prosecutorial discretion [3]. Multiple analyses document a pronounced reorientation toward removing recent border crossers and noncitizens convicted of crimes, with DHS reporting that by 2016 over 90 percent of interior removals were of individuals with serious criminal convictions, a rise from about 51 percent in 2009 [5] [3].
3. Conflicting evidence and critiques on compliance
Despite the headline numbers, evidence about ICE’s fidelity to priorities is mixed: advocates and some researchers argue PEP reduced interior enforcement activity, including deportations of criminal aliens, while administration defenders said the memos enabled clearer targeting of serious threats [4] [7]. The American Immigration Council and other analysts caution that implementation varied across offices and that the data show only partial, uneven adherence to the policy goals [7] [1].
4. Policy design, incentives, and political context
The memos reflect an explicit allocation-of-scarce-resources rationale—acknowledging the impossibility of removing millions and instructing officers to prioritize serious threats—which carried implicit political trade-offs: they sought to reduce community fear and preserve trust at “sensitive locations,” but critics charged the changes reflected political calculus as much as public‑safety strategy [6] [7]. Opponents—particularly conservative and immigration‑restrictions voices—argued the shift created a “soft” enforcement posture and pointed to declines in removals as evidence that criminal aliens were not being adequately pursued [4] [8].
5. Downstream consequences and how later administrations reacted
The shift in priorities changed who was vulnerable to interior enforcement—fewer status violators and more recent crossers and criminal cases—which in turn affected community behavior, local law‑enforcement cooperation dynamics, and legislative fights over programs like Secure Communities and PEP [5] [2] [6]. The Trump administration repudiated and reversed these priorities early in its term, broadening targets and restoring agent discretion to pursue any removable person—an explicit acknowledgement that the Obama memos had materially narrowed enforcement focus [3] [9].
6. Bottom line and limits of available reporting
The memos were explicit attempts to narrow ICE’s interior enforcement to higher‑risk categories and, according to multiple sources, coincided with substantial declines in interior removals and a higher share of removals involving criminal convictions; however, scholars and advocacy groups dispute the degree of actual compliance and emphasize regional variation and political motivations behind both praise and critique [3] [5] [4]. Reporting and academic work document the broad outcomes and contested interpretations, but gaps remain about granular, local implementation practices and how much discretion was exercised case‑by‑case—a limitation in the available sources [1] [7].