Obama administration asks Supreme Court to save immigration plan

The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to reinstate President Obama’s deportation amnesty Friday, filing papers appealing a federal appeals court’s decision blocking the amnesty exactly a year after the program was first announced.

Nearly immediately after Obama announced his executive action last November, Texas, OH and 24 other states filed a lawsuit seeking to stop it. In February, Judge Andrew Hanen of U.S. District Court in Brownsville, Texas, entered a preliminary injunction shutting down the program.

The request from the Obama Administration for the Supreme Court to review the case, Texas v. U.S., comes during the week of the one-year anniversary of the President’s announcement of the new programs.

The administration wants the justices to rule on giving work permits to millions before the president’s term ends.

The prior ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ten days ago is a loss for the president. That would give the Obama administration several months to implement the DAPA and expanded DACA programs before Obama leaves office.

So far, the courts have blocked Obama’s plan – but with time running out his administration, Obama has moved to get the issue to the Supreme Court by June.

Pro-immigration groups welcomed the Obama administration’s quick appeal of a judicial ruling that shut down his executive actions on immigration. The decision by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli to file the government’s petition Friday starts a process that would allow the court, absent any delays, to do just that. There is only a brief period of time for the nine justices to agree to hear the case term.

“That is why we continue to work tirelessly toward comprehensive legislation that allows all 11 million immigrant families to come out of the shadows and at last, live with dignity and certainty”, she said. But 26 mostly Republican-led states challenged the program and kept it from moving forward.

U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, wrote that the Deferred Action plan goes beyond the law enforcement concept of “prosecutorial discretion”, in which a government with limited resources sets priorities for enforcement.

Advocates in other cities said they are also trying to show their movement is still alive, said Emily Kessel, a spokeswoman for the Virginia-based National Korean-American Service and Education Consortium.

An earlier executive order called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals shields children who have been brought to the country illegally from being deported is not being challenged. Marisa Franco, Director of an immigrant rights campaign said in a statement that they couldn’t wait for another year until the court reached a decision for a program that only included half the people who need relief.