And he did so at the urging of SEIU (the union that has driven much of Seattle's minimum wage debate) and a slew of liberal reformist groups. The New York Times editorializes today:

President Obama asked the homeland security secretary, Jeh Johnson, in March to review the administration’s immigration enforcement policies. He was under intense pressure from immigrant advocates, frustrated at Congress’s inaction on reform, who were imploring him to act on his own to end or slow the pace of deportations. Now he’s backing off and asking Mr. Johnson to delay the review...

It is hard not to be skeptical of the president’s oft-repeated, oft-failed strategy of waiting for Republican legislators to do their jobs. Theirs is not a party that seems ready to embrace immigrants, to hand a domestic-policy triumph to a president they hate, or to put the country and the will of the people ahead of narrow political interests.

Other immigration advocates have said Congress’s July Fourth recess is make-or-break time. If House Republicans haven’t shown willingness to move a bill by then, then summer lassitude and fall electoral politics will take over, the moment will vanish and the job of fixing the system will fall to the next Congress and president, or the next, or the next.

Even July is too long a wait for thousands of would-be Americans who would qualify for legal status under the stalled reform. Instead, they live in fear of being torn from their families, as the Obama administration keeps on deporting people, figuring that after two million deportations, give or take, what’s a few thousand more?

One of those few thousand is Shoreline's Jaime Rubio-Sulficio, who local immigration enforcement agents are pushing to deport and tear away from his 15 month old son and his disabled wife, who suffers from epilepsy.

"If Obama is serious about wanting to stop the senseless deportations of millions of immigrants with deep roots in the U.S. and who pose no threat to society," said Rubio-Sulficio's attorney Lori Walls in a statement today, "then he should start by offering Jaime the relief he deserves."