Obama's Immigration Legacy

The centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s immigration legacy heads to the Supreme Court on Monday, where a short-staffed court bench will decide the fate of his controversial programs to grant work permits to millions of immigrants in the United States illegally.

Whichever way the high court ultimately rules, its decision will again inject the volatile issue of immigration into an explosive presidential campaign. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have pledged to push the bounds of executive power and expand Obama’s immigration actions. Meanwhile, the top two GOP hopefuls — Donald Trump and Ted Cruz — have promised to rescind the programs immediately and have taken particularly hard-line stances against undocumented immigrants.

But Obama’s immigration legacy is also on the line in United States v. Texas. He was not successful in signing comprehensive immigration reform into law during his two terms, and Obama has come under fire from advocates for deporting more than 2 million immigrants during his tenure. Meanwhile, his sweeping executive actions have been blocked for more than a year, and even if the Supreme Court rules in his favor, the administration will have just seven months to jump-start the programs before Obama leaves the White House.

“I think the president’s legacy is intact” on immigration, said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime proponent of immigration reform who will attend Monday’s oral arguments. “The Supreme Court, I hope, will sustain his good judgment on this issue.”

Other congressional Democrats closely involved in immigration will watch the arguments, including Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Reps. Joaquin Castro of Texas and Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois, who said Democrats believe the highly charged immigration case will be a political boon in 2016 regardless of how the court decides. A ruling is expected in June.

Gutiérrez reasons that if the court rules in favor of the administration, Latino voters and others motivated by immigration will come out in droves to protect the programs from a potential GOP president who would move to kill it. And if the administration loses, the same group will vote with similar intensity to punish Republicans, who spearheaded the legal case against Obama at the state level.

“Politically, it’s a win-win,” said Gutiérrez, adding that he is confident the court will allow the immigration programs, called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, to proceed.

As with other high-profile Supreme Court cases, the scene outside 1 First St. NE on Monday morning is sure to be a circus. Immigration advocates from across the country will descend on the court’s front steps with lawmakers, civil rights activists and labor officials for a major rally. Organizers said they are expecting thousands.

Conservative activists will counter those efforts with a protest of their own that touches not just on immigration but on the ongoing contentious battle over the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Groups including the Tea Party Patriots, Judicial Crisis Network, FreedomWorks and Heritage Action will join conservative Reps. Steve King of Iowa, Louie Gohmert of Texas and Ted Yoho of Florida.

“We will be there to protest Barack Obama’s attempt to stack the high court with a liberal crony who will sign off on his unconstitutional power grabs,” said Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and CEO of Tea Party Patriots.

The pro-reform side is making a particularly aggressive public-relations effort in the run-up to the high-stakes court case. On Friday, the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice released results of a poll from Latino Decisions that found 74 percent of Latino voters are less likely to support a Republican presidential candidate who opposes the deferred action program.

Latino Decisions does polling for Clinton, who is a vigorous backer of Obama’s executive actions and announced last week that she would establish a national Office of Immigrant Affairs if she is elected in November. Similarly, Sanders backs the executive actions and, like Clinton, has pledged to expand them to a larger pool of undocumented immigrants, despite the legal challenges Obama has faced doing so.

But Obama’s executive actions have united an otherwise splintered Republican presidential field in opposition to the programs. Trump has vowed to undo the programs on his first day of office if he’s elected president, as has Cruz, who has repeatedly derided the actions as “executive amnesty.”

Republicans have also long emphasized that Obama — who was under pressure from impatient immigration advocates to halt deportations — himself said multiple times that he didn’t have the executive powers to do what he ultimately did in November 2014.

“Let’s remember it was President Obama who said time and again that he did not have the authority to bypass Congress to impose new immigration laws,” said Ruth Guerra, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. “His executive action was contrary to his words, poisoned the well for a legislative effort and blatantly ignored the Constitution.”

Inside the courtroom, lawyers for the House of Representatives will be making their own case against Obama’s executive actions to provide deportation protections and work permits to more than 4 million immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally but are parents of U.S. citizens or green-card holders. Obama’s actions also expanded a 2012 initiative granting those benefits to immigrants who came here illegally as children.

The GOP-controlled chamber was granted 15 minutes before the court to back up arguments made by Texas and the 25 other states that have sued the Obama administration to stop the programs. House lawmakers also voted along near-party lines last month to submit an amicus brief in the case. Senate Republicans also filed a brief defending the conservative coalition opposing the immigration actions.

Obama’s executive actions are “an unprecedented effort, as the President acknowledged, to ‘change’ the immigration laws by executive fiat,” the House brief says. “Whether couched as a statutory power, a constitutional power, or an implicit component of ‘enforcement discretion,’ that is not a power the Executive possesses.”

On the opposing side, lawyers representing three undocumented mothers from South Texas will have 10 minutes to make an emotional appeal on behalf of the immigrant women. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which, along with law firms O’Melveny & Myers and DLA Piper, is aiding the women, said the mothers would qualify for DAPA and plan to apply if the programs get the green light from the court to proceed.          Politico