Supreme Court Blocks Obama’s Plan to Spare Millions of Immigrants from Deportation

Connolly, a Northern Virginia Democrat, calls the court’s action “a devastating setback for millions of families”.

“Today’s decision keeps in place what we have maintained from the very start: One person, even a president, can not unilaterally change the law”, Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement after the ruling.

The tie in the United States’ highest court all but ensures the end for Obama’s plan to protect undocumented parents from deportation.

The 4-4 tie in USA v. Texas, a challenge by that state and 25 others against Obama’s executive actions, leaves in place an injunction by a lower court that blocked the government from implementing two programs that would protect both children and their parents from deportation. Republican governors lead the 26 states that sued the government.

Mr. Trump said in a statement, “The executive amnesty from President Obama wiped away the immigration rules written by Congress, giving work permits and entitlement benefits to people illegally in the country”.

Obama said the USA immigration system has been broken for two decades and that this ruling set it back even further.

And the court’s action Thursday also means that immigration will only escalate in importance as a campaign issue.

The court did not reveal how each justice voted in the ruling, but it was possible the four liberals backed Obama and the four conservatives backed the states.

Obama has said he took the action after years of frustration with Republicans in Congress who had repeatedly refused to support bipartisan Senate legislation to update immigration laws.

The four-four tie means that an appeals court decision blocking the plan will stand - a devastating blow for Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program, which he had “hoped would become one of his central legacies”, the New York Times reports. The organizations want an immigration plan that will once and for all, define them and allow undocumented people to work, drive and study.

“As human beings, we deserve more”, she says.

“My life would have changed if the vote had been favorable”, she said through a translator during a rally outside the Supreme Court.