Janet Napolitano backs immigration executive action

Ex-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano — who oversaw a sweeping directive that gave hundreds of thousands of young immigrants a reprieve from deportations — says she is backing President Barack Obama’s planned executive action on immigration.

“If Congress refuses to act and perform its duties, then I think it’s appropriate for the executive to step in and use his authorities based on law … to take action in the immigration arena,’’ Napolitano said in an interview with The Washington Post published Monday.

The comments came in advance of a speech that Napolitano will deliver later Monday at the University of Georgia School of Law. The speech, called “Anatomy of a Legal Decision,” dissected the internal debate over the federal 2012 directive, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, that halted deportations of young undocumented immigrants and gave them work permits.

“It just seemed to me that we needed to do something for this group of young people,” Napolitano, now the president of the University of California system, told the paper. “They were brought here as kids, not of their own volition. They really are kind of the worst victims of the lack of immigration reform.”