The Supreme Court shot down the administration’s effort to kick-start President Obama’s deportation amnesty, refusing Monday to grant a rehearing in a case the court deadlocked on just a few months ago.
The refusal lets stand the decision by an appeals court, which found Mr. Obama broke immigration law by trying to grant a three-year amnesty from deportation and to issue work permits to as many as 5 million illegal immigrants.
Mr. Obama and his team had hoped the justices would reconsider after a 4-4 deadlock at the high court in June, but the justices declined the request as part of a long list of refusals on the first day of their 2016 session.
“The Obama administration’s unprecedented attempt to rewrite federal immigration law failed yet again today,” said Carrie Severino, chief counsel at the Judicial Crisis Network. “It’s fitting that the Texas immigration case, which typifies this administration’s relentless overreach, met its end in a wordless denial by the Supreme Court.”
Things could have gone worse for the administration. Had Justice Antonin Scalia not died, it’s possible the court would have ruled 5-4 against Mr. Obama in June, issuing an opinion that could have permanently curtailed presidential powers.
Slow news days like weekends or holidays are the best time for the federal government to sneak in an announcement that would otherwise outrage the public. With immigration occupying the front and center stage, a pro-illegal alien policy decision that would rile up enforcement-minded citizens is best done in the cloak of darkness.
In its non-stop effort to eviscerate immigration laws, the Department of Homeland Security operating with President Obama's blessing posted an item in the little read Federal Register stating that certain aliens would soon be granted "unlawful presence waivers." Simply put, illegal aliens who can prove they have a U.S. citizen relative will get a waiver that allows them to remain in the country until their legal residency application is processed.
Casting a shadow on economic recovery efforts in the United States is the cost of illegal immigration that consumes U.S. taxpayer dollars for education, healthcare, social welfare benefits, and criminal justice. Illegal aliens (or more politically correct, “undocumented immigrants”) with ties to Mexican drug cartels are contributing to death and destruction on U.S. lands along the southern border.
While the declining job market in the United States may be discouraging some would-be border crossers, a flow of illegal aliens continues unabated, with many entering the United States as drug-smuggling “mules.”
Increasingly vicious foot soldiers of the Mexican drug cartels are taking control of U.S. lands along the border, especially since U.S. Border Patrol units have been reassigned, some to offices 60 to 80 miles inland.
