According to an official 2013 memo obtained by the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a top Obama legal office interfered with cases involving the deportation of illegal immigrants.
The memo, written by former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Deputy Legal Advisor Riah Ramlogan, required attorneys to submit written requests explaining why an ICE agent's testimony would be necessary before taking a stand in court, the Washington Examiner first reported.
The IRLI believes that the memo provides evidence for congressional claims that the Obama administration purposefully obstructed progress on immigration reform at a time when thousands of illegal immigrants were flooding across the Southwest border.
In a 2014 article from CBS News, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) accused the Obama administration of abusing immigration laws, stating, "A better solution to stop the flood of illegal entrants is for President Obama to halt his abuses of prosecutorial discretion, actually enforce our immigration laws within the interior of the United States, and start to crack down on fraudulent asylum claims - all of which he has the authority to do now."
Three years later, Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of the IRIL, sees the freshly unearthed memo as validation for Goodlatte’s harsh criticism, stating:
The document confirms what the House Judiciary [Committee] had been hearing for years: that Obama was blocking cooperation between ICE agents and their ICE attorney colleagues in an effort to obstruct our immigration laws.
Of course, if true, this certainly wouldn't mark the first time the Obama administration purposefully kept ICE officials from deporting illegal aliens.