The immigration raids in the US in the first week of January with the arrest for deportation of 121 Central Americans, President Barack Obama left exposed to the wrath of allies and ridicule of his opponents, in a delicate election year.
With the country plunged into a presidential campaign that the migration issue became a sensitive issue, the raids by the Immigration (ICE) in various states provoked reactions from all sides with criticism of the government as one element in common.
Although the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has stressed that rules adopted by Obama in 2014 made it a priority to deport people who already received a warrant expulsion matching ads with the holidays just exasperated spirits .
The presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a senator from the Democratic Party, sent a personal letter to Obama where he expressed "extreme disappointment" with operations that resulted in detention of adults and children, claiming that "the raids are not the solution."
In his letter, Sanders told Obama it is "disturbing" know that "according to reports recently 83 Central Americans who were denied asylum migrants were killed just months after returning" to their countries.
Another Democratic presidential hopeful, Martin O'Malley, said in a campaign that Central American immigrants should benefit from Temporary Protected Status (TPS, in English), instead of being arrested and deported.
President of Democratic bloc in the Senate, Harry Reid, told reporters that contacted the Department of Homeland Security to call for "back off until we can find a better way to do this."
Criticisms of "Chief Deportador"
Entities defense and protection to immigrants already rated Obama of "Deportador in Chief", reacted with equal hardness to new raids.
For Alex Christopher, president of the Latino Victory entity is "outrageous" that the US authorities "are conducting raids to deport families of refugees seeking haven from violence and persecution."
According to Alex, "the deportation of mothers and children is abhorrent and unconscionable, and as a political decision does not make sense."
Mists Victor, president of the American Bar Association migration issues, and Benjamin Johnson, director of the American Immigration Council (AIC), sent a harsh letter to the Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, legally challenged the raids.
"We see no justification," they wrote, "use of aggressive tactics against a vulnerable population that can send entire families to risk conditions for life in their countries of origin."
The AIC mobilized a team of lawyers working pro bono and managed to stop the deportation of four families who had been arrested and deported in separate raids last weekend.
"It was time!"
But if the raids were on target to lower the decibel of the anti-immigrant rhetoric in the election campaign, especially the Republican Party presidential candidates, it appears that will not succeed, at least for now.
The controversial candidate Donald Trump, that in the election campaign defends the expulsion of about 11 million illegal immigrants in the Twitter network said that the government had decided to organize raids "because of the pressure put on me."
"It's about time!" Trump said in his message, which gave the green light to other candidates of the Republican field to jump into the ring to stand as advocates an even tougher line.
In a campaign, Republican candidate Ted Cruz harshly criticized the immigration policy of Obama and made clear that his own plan is even more radical than Trump, because if that is elected will not allow immigrants once expelled can return, even legally.
To a question from a Latin American immigrant who could not hold back tears, Cruz replied that "if I am elected president, my job will deport".
Since Obama was criticized by Republicans for his handling of illegal wave of Central American children in 2013 and his decision to decree in November 2014 more favorable to immigrants.
On the eve of Christmas, the government reported that between October 2014 and September 2015 ICE (known as the "Migra") "it removed or returned 235,413 individuals", equivalent to an average of more than 1,200 people per day.
On Monday, Johnson said in an official note that "since the summer of 2014 we removed and repatriated immigrants from Central America at a fast pace, with an average of 14 flights a week. Most of the returnees were single adults."