Tim Fox Comments on Immigration Decision Overturning Obama Executive Action

“The department disagrees with the Fifth Circuit’s adverse ruling and intends to seek further review from the Supreme Court of the United States”, Department of Justice spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said in a statement.

It must move quickly, filing its petition in a matter of weeks in order to get the case heard by April and decided by the end of the court’s term in June. The Obama administration and immigrant rights groups have said they are confident the Supreme Court would rule in their favor and that DAPA and DACA are constitutional. Obama took executive action in 2014 to enact his plan, which is known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and also would protect law-abiding Hispanics from deportation.

But now that a federal appeals court in New Orleans upheld a Texas-based federal judge’s injunction against the president’s plan this week, she’s not sure what will happen.

Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, in a statement said the court’s “flawed ruling” was inconsistent with even the most basic legal principles.

The two judges ruled that Obama had “no statutory authority” to issue such sweeping orders on immigration.

Shortly after the announcement of these programs, Texas, along with 26 other states, sued the federal government with the goal of stopping the programs from being implemented.

Republicans have criticized the president’s plan as illegal executive overreach since Obama announced it last November.

President Obama created the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) and expanded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programs by executive action in 2014.

The Obama administration argued that’s how it would roll out this program, but the court dismissed that argument.

The program was set to begin in February, but then a judge in Brownsville, Texas, showed that the White House missed a few required federal policy making steps, and so he stopped the Immigration Plan hours before it could received applications.

“The impact of Republican opposition both to these executive actions and to broader comprehensive immigration reform legislation is to only perpetuate a system in which our law enforcement resources are diffused and it results in more families being torn apart”. The timing will depend on whether the Justice Department appeals the decision directly to the Supreme Court.

The opinion farther dims prospects of execution before Obama leaves office.