Obama Administration Looking to Supreme Court for Assist in immigration case

The Obama administration has formally asked the US Supreme Court to review President Obama’s executive action on illegal immigration. But on Friday, the Justice Department filed an appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to allow Obama’s executive actions to be implemented.

That decision, unless reversed, “will force millions of people…to continue to work off the books, without the option of lawful employment to provide for their families”, he said.

A day after the House overwhelmingly backed onerous hurdles for Syrian refugees, White House officials said President Barack Obama’s intention to veto the bill hadn’t wavered, even though it passed with a veto-proof majority – including 47 members of his own party.

If the Supreme Court justices’ decide to stand with the president, which could not be announced until late June of 2016, Obama would only have seven months to actively enforce his plan before the next presidential inauguration.

The program was initially halted in February by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen of Brownsville, who ruled the administration didn’t comply with the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal regulations are made.

To those who share the views of Mr. Trump and Mr. Carson, let me say that the vast and overwhelming majority of immigrants – and I have come to know many hundreds if not thousands over the years – are not criminals or terrorists or a threat of any kind to our way of life.

The brief represents the administration’s last real hope of getting a court to green light the programs before the next election.

The administration appealed a ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that kept the government from implementing an expansion to deferred action, a program that gives work permits to a few immigrants in the country illegally.

“More than 11 million removable aliens are estimated to live in the U.S. But Congress has appropriated the funds to remove only a fraction of that population in any given year”, the administration’s appeal said.

The appeal was presented by the Justice department on Friday.

“There are folks who are watching very keenly what’s going on because they understand that the light at the end of the tunnel is there and that we’re not done yet”, said Polo Morales, political director at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHILR). The appeals court reversed that decision last week, but only on Thursday did it officially grant the women permission to join in the expected Supreme Court appeal. Twenty-six states challenged the plan in court.

The court also examined a similar program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), to determine how DAPA would be applied. Today, millions of American families remain at risk of being torn apart by a broken immigration system. The counsel added that in fact if the court didn’t hear the case it would risk the appearance of engaging in politics.