Supreme Court sets election-year clash on immigration

Arizona immigration activists are praising the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear a case challenging President Obama’s executive order easing some immigration rules.

Setting priorities about whom to deport is a practical response to the fact that Congress has given the administration only enough money to deport no more than about 400,000 of the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, the government says.

Texas quickly led a legal challenge to Obama’s program on behalf of 26 states and has won every round in court so far.

The court will review a ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in November that upheld the decision by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville, Texas to halt Obama’s actions.

“[Tuesday’s] decision by the Supreme Court is exciting news for us because it means we should actually hear something this year”, said Frankie Rodriguez, the senior pastor at El Camino and an accredited immigration representative at Immigration Connection. The Obama administration has been seeking to vindicate his 2014 executive action that, in the face of congressional refusal to address comprehensive immigration reform, deferred deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants.

After seven years, 2 million-plus deportations, two executive actions and 720,000 “Dreamers”, the bottom line on President Barack Obama’s immigration record still remains an open question for many immigrants and their advocates.

While the Supreme Court hears the case, Amparo and her son said they will have to wait and hope for the best.

“It signifies a lot to immigrant communities, who have been waiting for a year now, because all of 2015, President Obama’s actions were delayed”.

In a statement, Mairele Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, said the Supreme Court “has the opportunity to remedy this grievous legal and moral error”.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has been leading the charge in court against the Obama administration, said that the unilateral actions are unconstitutional and that the administration also violated the Administrative Procedures Act, a law that sets forth how federal agencies can establish regulations.

“Instead of having the peace of mind that comes with deferred action, these law-abiding men and women continue to live in constant fear of being separated from their children. Not just for our homes but in the U.S. We’d be stepping out of the shadow”.

The Obama administration had challenged Texas’ legal standing to challenge the program.

The immigration issue has driven a wedge between Hispanics, an increasingly important voting bloc, and Republicans, many of whom have offered tough words about illegal immigration. Combined that is 200,000 people in Arizona.

That program could keep De Anda’s family and millions of other illegal immigrants from being deported too. They forecast much higher numbers than those who applied to the earlier 2012 program, largely because many more are eligible.