Like some fundamental promises by the Obama administration, including peace, health care reform and the recovery of our economy, the prospect of immigration reform in 2010 may well prove to be just another mirage.

Deeply mired in problems Obama did not create, he certainly must fulfill his promise and responsibility to solve them. What good is it to have a Nobel Peace winner unable to extricate the United States from its loosing wars but that rather steps them up? What prevented Obama from graciously declining the award until such time he could actually achieve something?

The war debacle parallels Obama’s portended efforts to handle the immigration crisis humanely and justly.

When a Federal judge struck down in 2007 the infamous Hazleton anti-immigrant ordinances, a then-Senator Barack Obama hailed that decision as a “victory for all Americans” which in his words underscored the need for national immigration reform.

Yet in his first year in office, the Obama administration carries through a very similar immigration agenda to the prior administration, although perhaps more gently. The Immigration detention system still fails while immigrants “are held unnecessarily and transferred heedlessly” denying basic fairness as per a report released earlier this month.

The Homeland Security Department’s inspector general also found that some detainee transfers by ICE are carried out “without having served a notice of why they were being held”.

Do we understand how this just annuls basic guarantees enshrined in our Constitution’s Fourth Amendment? What ever happened to something as basic as not being arrested without a warrant?

Those detainee transfers –affecting even legal immigrants- have been accelerating, Human Rights Watch found “tens of thousands of longtime residents of cities like Philadelphia and Los Angeles being sent to remote immigration jails in Texas and Louisiana”

President Obama had campaigned on a promise of a more compassionate approach to immigration enforcement, yet he is far more immersed in stepping up the efforts of rounding up immigrants.

In perfect parallel in Afghanistan the President escalates the war before declaring peace, we just hope immigrants are not subjected to more abuses before some basic human rights are finally bestowed upon them.