President Barack Obama's executive action protects up to five million undocumented immigrants from deportation for at least two years. It's unclear how the local immigrant population will react.
That's because the executive action could be overturned by any future president, potentially putting people that file for administrative relief at risk of deportation.
William Lopez works with the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights. He's part of the urgent response team that assists immigrants living in the area who face detainment and deportation. Lopez hopes the president's action will reduce his caseload, but is concerned about how it will trickle down to actual enforcement policies. "We've seen that the president has already said we're not going to focus efforts on members of the community who have, and he cited a number of things, been working, been paying taxes, have families, but yet we see them detained and deported all the time," Lopez says.
Lopez says parents of legal citizens and children who were brought to the country before 2010 can begin collecting documents and saving money needed to apply.
Like 89.1 WEMU on Facebook and follow us on Twitter— Andrew Cluley is the Ann Arbor beat reporter, and anchor for 89.1 WEMU News. Contact him at734.487.3363 or email him acluley@emich.edu.
