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I do not find this convincing. As mentioned below, Alfredo Orellana isn't an illegal immigrant; he's a permanent resident, and it seems like you already knew this. While permanent residents can be deported under certain circumstances, they possess a legal status that illegal immigrants do not. Conflating these two categories is muddying the waters when discussing immigration policies and deportation, to say the least.
I also don't find it to be good and necessary to deport him in this case. For Orellana, the offense cited is attempting to scam a store out of $200 eight years ago. This was a relatively minor crime, as it was not violent and I don't think it rose to the level of felony (but I could be wrong, not a lawyer). Also, if the only crime the government cited is from 8 years ago, then I think it's very likely that there are no serious more-recent crimes to levy on him, and, given his employment and (claimed) benefit to the community, he's probably rehabilitated. So, should an 8 year-old, minor, non-violent offense be sufficient grounds to deport a legal resident who has since rehabilitated and established a stable life? I say no.
Of course this is all just based on NYT's reporting, and I'm not able to find any other source of information to corroborate it. If it is discovered later that Orellana is actually a drug dealer with a very long wrap sheet, I'll change my mind.
This isn't creative Trump Administration executive action. An alien is excludable if they committed a crime of moral turpitude (and larceny counts) if the crime they committed either carries a sentence of more than a year or if they were sentenced to more than 6 months ("regardless of the extent to which the sentence was ultimately executed"). Petty larceny in Virginia carries a sentence of 12 months, so if he was sentenced to more than 6 months (even if he didn't serve that much), he's excludable ("who shall be excluded from admission into the United States"). Note he was not deported; he left for vacation in El Salvador and was detained upon return. This is statute law.
I see. Thank you for the context. It's certainly more palatable to me that he was considered inadmissible at the port of entry rather than hunted down by ICE. For the reasons I outlined in my previous post, I still think it's not a good thing in this specific case to keep him out, but the policy seems reasonable on its face. I'm not informed enough to know whether his scenario is the 5% case or the 50% case, so I'll refrain from passing judgement on the policy itself. Though even if his case is the 5% case, I would wish the bureaucracy to be flexible enough in corner cases such as these to admit those with minor crimes long in the past and have since been reintegrated with their community.
But this highlights an additional problem in the original post. The one example for deporting illegal immigrants depicted neither an illegal immigrant nor deportation in its typical sense.
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