Politico
By Seung Min Kim
March 8, 2016
Democratic
lawmakers are again marshaling overwhelming support for President
Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration, whose future now hangs
in the
balance at the Supreme Court.
More
than 200 Democrats are backing a new amicus brief that will be filed
later Tuesday with the high court, arguing the controversial actions
Obama took in
November 2014 that could defer deportations and grant work permits to
more than 4 million immigrants in the United States illegally are both
legal and constitutional.
The
renewed effort from Democrats comes as House Republicans are also
mulling whether to get involved in the high-stakes case. Speaker Paul
Ryan (R-Wis.) said
last week that the House will vote on a resolution to allow lawmakers
to file an amicus brief in
Texas vs. United States, calling Obama’s executive actions a “direct attack on the Congress’ Article I powers under our Constitution.”
Now, Democrats are quickly trying to counter the GOP’s offensive against Obama’s actions.
The
new amicus brief from Democrats also delves deeper into a new legal
question that the Supreme Court will consider: whether Obama violated
the “Take Care”
clause, which essentially calls on the president to “take care” that
laws are faithfully executed.
Democrats
are insisting that Obama is not violating the “Take Care” clause
because the executive actions are well within the authority of Homeland
Security
Secretary Jeh Johnson, whose sprawling agency oversees immigration
matters.
Because
Congress sets aside a finite amount of money for deporting undocumented
immigrants every year (that figure is generally estimated at 400,000
immigrants
annually, while there are an estimated 11 million undocumented
immigrants in the United States), Homeland Security officials have to
set priorities for who to deport with those limited resources. Obama’s
executive actions lay out such priorities, and because
Democrats believe doing so is within Johnson’s authority, it “by
definition reflects the faithful execution of the law,” Democrats say.
The
executive action “reflects the decision by [Johnson], acting within
finite congressional appropriations insufficient to remove every
removable noncitizen,
to channel DHS’s enforcement efforts according to a set of removal
priorities,” the Democratic lawmakers wrote in a draft of the brief
obtained by POLITICO in advance of its release. “That is not a deviation
from the obligation to faithfully execute the laws;
rather, it is a fulfillment of it.”
The
Supreme Court — which is operating with eight members after the death
last month of Justice Antonin Scalia — will hear the immigration case on
April 18.
If there is a 4-4 tie, the lower court’s decision blocking the programs
will stand or the case could be put on for reargument next term, in the
hope a replacement for Scalia is seated then. Texas and the more than
two dozen other states suing the Obama administration
over the immigration initiatives have won three times in the lower
courts.
“Republicans’
breathtaking obstruction has perpetuated an utterly broken immigration
system that tears families apart, dishonors our values as Americans, and
fails to meet the needs of our country,” House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in
a joint statement. “We are confident the Supreme Court will recognize
the legality and necessity of the President’s
actions to help bring our immigration system back into line with the
values and needs of our country.”
Nearly 40 Senate Democrats signed onto the amicus brief, as did 186 House Democrats.
The
new legal push was spearheaded by Democratic leadership, Rep. Zoe
Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). More than 200
Democratic lawmakers
filed a separate friend-of-the-court brief with the Supreme Court in
December, urging justices to hear the case.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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