From the Editors

The politics of deportation

On election day, the Republicans will almost certainly retain control of the House of Representatives. The Democrats may lose the Senate. And 1,000 more undocumented immigrants will be deported.

That’s the current daily average, and the Obama administration recently announced that it will wait until after the November midterms to do anything to change this. Previously, the president promised executive action to protect immigrant families, given Congress’s failure to take up immigration reform. Now those families will have to wait—and perhaps be deported.

A White House official told the New York Times that acting too soon would be unsustainable, even “harmful to the policy itself.” Left unsaid: Obama is trying to help Democrats in close Senate races by declining to add fuel to their opponents’ fire.