MIAMI BACKLOG: 23,045 CASES

Cynthia Adriana Gonzalez stood before Immigration Judge G.W. Riggs and awaited instructions. She’s an undocumented immigrant from Mexico with no criminal record and three children born in the U.S.

Gonzalez’s attorney asked for “prosecutorial discretion,” a common practice under the Obama administration in which the Department of Homeland Security didn’t push to deport undocumented immigrants with no criminal record.

The new directives vastly broaden the pool of undocumented immigrants considered for deportation. The result has been a jarring shift in which the government

FREDERIC J. BROWN, AFP/GETTY IMAGES Department of Homeland Security officers stand guard in front of the Los Angeles Immigration Court building as protesters gather in March after the high-profile arrest of Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez, a Mexican who lived in the USA for 27 years. He was...