Some young illegal immigrant students spared deportation

We wrote earlier this month about several young illegal immigrants who lobbied hard for the passage of the DREAM Act last year and are now facing deportation. But Olga Zanella, a 20-year-old college student profiled by the New York Times this week, has been luckier.

Zanella, who was brought to the U.S. as a five-year-old, was pulled over in Texas in February 2009 and arrested because she didn't have a driver's license. She was then put through the Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) system and ordered deported. But last week, an ICE official told her she could remain in this country on a few conditions: she checks in with the agency every month, remains under their supervision, and stays in school and out of trouble.

The agency wouldn't comment on why Zanella was allowed to stay in the United States. Though ICE says its priority is to deport criminals, about half of the people they deported last year were not convicted of any crime.

But the move represents what 22 Senate Democrats and immigrant-rights advocates have demanded of Obama since the DREAM Act failed to pass last December. They asked the president to defer deportations for all young people who would have qualified for legal status under the DREAM Act—those under age 30 who were brought to the country as children and graduated college or joined the military.

Obama said he couldn't do that because it "would not conform with my appropriate role as president."

The Times doesn't speculate on whether Zanella's case signals that ICE may be taking a different tack in dealing with students who have not committed a crime but are not authorized to be in the country. But in Central Florida, ICE officials told immigration lawyers to bring non-criminal illegal immigrants facing deportation to the agency for "provisional authorization for them to remain here and work legally."