Obama administration to appeal immigration ruling to Supreme Court News
Obama administration to appeal immigration ruling to Supreme Court

The US Department of Justice [official website] announced Tuesday that it disagrees with a federal ruling upholding [opinion, PDF] an injunction against President Barack Obama’s plan to protect as many as 5 million immigrants from deportation and plans to appeal to the US Supreme Court [official websites]. The Monday 2-1 ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit [official website] upheld a federal judge’s injunction against the president’s plan. Under executive orders [materials] issued by Obama, the parents of children who are legal permanent residents or citizens of the US would be protected [AP report] from deportation. Other immigrants who came to the country as children would be protected as well. While Texas Governor Greg Abbot supported the ruling, calling Obama’s “executive amnesty program” “lawless,” the White House released a statement saying that “the Supreme Court and Congress have made clear that the federal government can set priorities in enforcing [US] immigration laws.” A federal judge in Texas temporarily blocked [JURIST report] two key parts of Obama’s recent immigration initiative in February.

US immigration law [JURIST backgrounder] continues to be a controversial and heavily politicized area of law at both the state and federal levels. In October a judge for the US District Court of the Western District of Texas issued a temporary order [JURIST report] allowing Texas officials to continue denying birth certificates to children of immigrants. In September the US Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) issued a report criticizing [JURIST report] the Obama administration’s immigration detention facilities, stating that some “are not fully complying with detention standards regarding medical care, legal information and other basic standards of treatment.” In August a California judge upheld her July decision [JURIST reports] and ordered the government to release immigrant children held in family detention centers, “without necessary delay.” Last November a judge for the US District Court for the District of Arizona struck down [JURIST report] an Arizona law that made smuggling immigrants a state crime because it conflicts with federal laws governing immigration.