House Votes to Roll Back Obama's Immigration Actions

Politico

By Seung Min Kim

January 14, 2015

House votes to roll back Obama's immigration actions 

House Republicans mounted a furious assault on four years of President Barack Obama’s immigration policies Wednesday — satisfying hard-liners on the issue but prompting resistance among some moderates concerned that the party’s leadership has gone too far.

The GOP-led chamber voted 236-191 to pass legislation funding the Department of Homeland Security through the end of September, with measures attached that would effectively kill the administration’s efforts to unilaterally shield millions of undocumented immigrations from deportations. It would also thwart Obama administration enforcement policies that limited deportations of people who weren’t criminals or serial immigration violators.

But given the qualms of moderates in the Senate and a presidential veto threat, the all-out rollback doesn’t stand a chance of becoming law. So even with the legislation passing the House, Republican leadership — in both chambers — will face the complicated calculus of trying to keep DHS funded while registering the GOP’s broad disapproval of Obama’s unilateral moves on immigration.

“We do not take this action lightly, but simply there is no alternative,” Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said on the floor Wednesday. “This executive overreach is an affront to the rule of law and to the Constitution itself.”

Potential signs of trouble began erupting Tuesday, when House Republicans began telling the leadership’s whip operation that they planned to vote against an amendment from Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) that would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. That program, which Obama announced in 2012, has stopped some 600,000 young undocumented immigrants from being deported and allowed them to work legally.

Ultimately, 26 House Republicans voted against the measure killing DACA — mostly moderates on immigration who represent states with significant Latino populations, such as California, Florida, Nevada and New York. Some members were also irritated at the leadership’s courting of the hard-liners — particularly those who had mounted a failed coup against Boehner on the vote for speaker last week.

“This is rewarding bad behavior,” one frustrated GOP lawmaker said.

Still, the Blackburn amendment passed narrowly, 218-209.

DACA was the model for an even broader executive action announced by Obama last November, in which similar protections would be offered to roughly 4 million immigrants without legal status who have been here for at least five years and have children who are U.S. citizens or green-card holders. The administration also expanded DACA itself to a much larger pool of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States illegally at a young age.

To be sure, Wednesday’s plan had broad support from the GOP conference. But with near-unanimous Democratic opposition, the Republican leadership had to ensure it didn’t lose too many of its moderate members on the immigration policies, or else the overall bill could have sunk.

“If President Obama’s unilateral immigration amendments are not stopped, future presidents will continue to expand the power of the executive branch and encroach upon individual liberty,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who helped craft the party’s response to Obama’s executive action, said on the House floor Tuesday. “The time is now for Congress to take a stand against these abusive actions.”

With the Obama administration’s veto threat and the near-certain prospect that the GOP-held Senate would not have 60 votes for it, the House Republican legislation essentially has no chance of becoming law. Still, some Democrats privately worry that the heated debate in Washington over killing Obama’s executive actions could scare off immigrants who could qualify for the program, which would give a three-year deportation reprieve and work permits to nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants.

House Democrats discussed their strategy at a weekly party meeting on Tuesday, and they reached a consensus that if any of the five immigration amendments slated for a vote Wednesday gets attached, they would oppose final passage on the funding bill, according to an aide.

“These amendments are foolish and a step backwards,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said on the House floor Tuesday night. “And not funding DHS is dumb and dangerous.”

Democrats also took issue with other amendments that passed on Wednesday. For instance, Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) and Martha Roby (R-Ala.) have language requiring immigration officials to treat immigrants convicted of domestic violence or sex offenses as highest priorities for deportations.

But Lofgren circulated a Dear Colleague letter Tuesday that argued the legislation was, in part, redundant — because such immigrants already are included in the administration’s enforcement policies — but it doesn’t include an existing provision that requires officials to ask if the immigrant is a domestic violence victim. That, Lofgren argued, could open up potential domestic violence victims to deportations.

The Republican plan also ramps up immigration enforcement by reviving Secure Communities — the controversial federal fingerprint-swapping program on immigrants that Obama’s executive actions ended and replaced — and forces state and local officials to comply with so-called ICE detainers, in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement requests local law enforcement agencies to keep an immigrant in custody, even if they would otherwise be released.

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