President Obama said Thursday that the Supreme Court’s 4-4 deadlock, which effectively negates his 2014 executive actions regarding immigration policy, “sets our country back” and is “heartbreaking” for millions of illegal immigrants.
“Today’s decision is frustrating to those who seek to grow our economy and bring a rationality to our immigration system and to allow people to come out of the shadows and lift this perpetual cloud on them,” he said during brief remarks delivered from the White House.
The tie leaves in place a lower court ruling blocking the president’s orders. But Obama focused on how the non-ruling demonstrates that the Supreme Court is “unable to reach a decision,” arguing that it is more evidence that the Senate needs to consider his nominee for the high court, Judge Merrick Garland, to avoid more stalemates.
“This is part of the consequence of the Republican failure so far to give a fair hearing to Mr. Merrick Garland,” Obama said.
Obama downplayed the outcome, saying a tie doesn’t resolve anything.
“If we have a full court issuing a full opinion on anything, then we take it seriously,” he said. “This, we have to abide by, but it wasn’t any kind of value statement or a decision on the merits on these issues.”
Senate Republicans are “are willfully preventing the Supreme Court from being fully staffed and functioning as our founders intended,” he continued. “And today’s situation underscores the degree to which the court is not able to function the way it’s supposed to.”
Most Republicans have refused to meet with Garland, chief of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, considered second only to the Supreme Court in importance, in the three months since Obama tapped him to replace the-late Justice Antonin Scalia. “They are allowing partisan politics to jeopardize something as fundamental as the impartiality and integrity of our justice system; and Americans should not let it stand,” he said.
But the gridlock forced Obama to admit that he is out of moves on immigration and Garland’s nomination.
“We have to follow, now, what has been ruled on in the 5th Circuit … until an election and a confirmation of a ninth justice of the Supreme Court” happens, Obama said.
The tie affirmed a lower court block of Obama’s Deferred Action for Parental Accountability policy, or “DAPA.” That executive action expanded an existing policy called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that said people who came intro the country illegally under the age of 16 would be eligible to request the government to defer any deportation. DAPA expanded that policy to include a DACA-eligible immigrant’s parents.
In conceding defeat, the president urged Americans to resolve the matter in November.
“You know, I have pushed to the limits of my executive authority,” Obama said. “But whether we are going to get this done now, soon, so that this does not continue to be this divisive force in our politics … is going to be determined, in part by, how voters turn out and who they vote for in November.”
Obama also stressed that the impasse merely prevents him from going further than his predecessors.
“The deferred action policy that has been in place for the last four years is not affected,” he said. “This means that the people who might’ve benefited from the expanded deferred actions polices, long-term residents raising children who are Americans or legal residents, they will remain low priorities for enforcement,” Obama said.
“We prioritize criminals; we prioritize gang bangers; we prioritize folks who have just come in,” he added. “What we don’t do is to prioritize people who have been here a long time who are otherwise law-abiding, who have roots and connections in their communities. And so — those enforcement priorities will continue.”
