The U.S. Supreme Court said Tuesday it will decide whether President Barack Obama can take executive action to protect from deportation as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants. The case probably will be argued in April and decided by late June, about a month before both parties’ presidential nominating conventions. She said some 6 million other residents still would be at risk because they don’t have children who are USA citizens.
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The U.S. Supreme Court will take on a hot-button issue during a presidential election year.
In blocking the administration’s immigration program, the lower federal courts did not render decisions on the legal issues surrounding the president’s action.
A local organization wants them to have the right to stay with their families, many of whom have become US citizens. The “2014 Order” also expanded the scope of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program previously put in place.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Tuesday, “We’ve got a lot of confidence in the legal arguments that we’ll be making before the court”. Should they find that the president overstepped his constitutional powers, those who have challenged Obama’s reliance on executive actions to circumvent Congress could see their criticism validated by the country’s highest court.
The Rev. Stephen Jasso, who leads a congregation of mostly immigrants at All Saints Catholic Church in north Fort Worth, said the lawsuit is dragging out a measure that was already a done deal by the president.
Twenty-three-year-old Cendi Trujillo of Milwaukee said that if the court upholds DAPA, her undocumented parents would no longer have to live in fear. He also announced the expansion of a program that affects people who came here illegally as children. Presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) posted on Twitter, saying that he is confident the Supreme Court will agree that the president’s executive orders are unconstitutional. He said the case would get a “more serious and less completely partisan” consideration there than it got in the lower courts, which he described as “ultraconservative”.
Some court observers saw in the court’s decision to look at Obama’s power under the Constitution a potentially ominous sign.
“DAPA is a crucial change in the nation’s immigration law and policy-and that is precisely why it could be created only by Congress, rather than unilaterally imposed by the Executive”, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said in a filing to the court.
The Obama administration called the president’s action mere guidance to immigration officials on how to exercise discretion given by Congress on how to enforce immigration laws. “Not just for our homes but in the U.S. We’d be stepping out of the shadow”.
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Obama’s action came after a bipartisan immigration policy overhaul bill passed by the Senate died in the House of Representatives.
