Though President Barack Obama has instructed the Department of Homeland Security to cease large-scale inspections of factories to arrest illegal immigrants, there has been a significant increase this year in federal court cases against illegal immigrants.

According to the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, there were 9037 immigration cases in federal courts this April, a 32 percent increase from last year.

President Obama has assured that his administration's stance on immigration will be more lenient than Bush's. However, the immigration policy that Obama has been vigorously enforcing was in fact put into place under Bush.

The federal government has recently carried out a series of measures that cause concern among immigration groups and Obama's Latino supporters. These groups have launched opposition movements nationwide, including demonstrations in New York City and Los Angeles.

United States Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has expanded the use of an electronic identification system, E-Verify, which allows employers to conduct background checks on new employees. Immigration and commercial groups have filed lawsuits trying to halt the measure, claiming the information in the database is not always correct and can cost U.S. citizens lost work opportunities.

Department of Homeland Security officials say that technical improvements have greatly reduced the system's degree of error. At present, 137,000 companies have been entered into the system. Of the 640,000 checks conducted this year, only 0.3 percent was inaccurate. Opponents argue that these errors resulted in over 19,000 people being wrongly denied jobs. Napolitano has also widened measures to check detainees' identities and determine if they are undocumented immigrants.