The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving the legality of President Barack Obama’s executive orders granting legal status to immigrants brought to the US as children or immigrants with children born in the US.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that the administration was “certainly interested in moving forward with implementing these executive actions as expeditiously as possible.” This in light of recent raids targeting 121 immigrants from Central America that continue to sow fear in the immigrant community.
While the president’s actions have been litigated in federal courts, should the court rule in his favor, it would represent an opportunity to make concrete progress on an issue that his administration has been unable to get support for in Congress.
Critics are just as hopeful for a win at the nation’s highest court. “As federal courts have already ruled three times, there are limits to the President’s authority. The Court should affirm what President Obama said himself on more than 20 occasions: that he cannot unilaterally rewrite congressional laws and circumvent the people’s representatives: said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is part of the lawsuit before the Court.
“There’s a real question right now of whether people are safe from deportation, not the least because in the last few weeks we’ve seen increased raids by the president,” said Karen Tumlin, legal director at the National Immigration Law Center.
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