On Thursday, top White House officials met with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to assuage their concerns over the president’s decision to delay taking executive action on immigration until after the November midterms. Latino lawmakers were understandably livid over the delay but used the meeting with the White House to identify viable next steps to ensure President Obama acts on immigration as soon as possible.
During the meeting, Denis McDonough, the White House Chief of Staff, told the lawmakers that the president was prepared to act before the “holiday season.” McDonough said, “The president understands the depth of the broken immigration system that we have and he’s bound and determined to make sure that we fix it because it’s impacting our economy, it’s impacting our job growth and it’s a humanitarian issue that’s impacting families across the country.”
McDonough and top domestic policy adviser Cecilia Muñoz did not get into the specifics of the array of options on the table, but spoke with lawmakers at length about the president’s intent to use his executive authority boldly and within the confines of the law to address immigration. Lawmakers stressed the need to communicate with the White House regularly in order to ensure any action the president takes is comprehensive and significant.
New Mexico Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham spoke for her colleagues and the Latino community when she said that she was deeply concerned about the tendency to stall an issue like immigration. She asked, “Why are we staling? For us, these are no political issues; these are substantive issues that move the country forward.”
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