Supreme Court appears split over Obama’s immigration plan

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court appeared deadlocked Monday over President Barack Obama’s plan to offer work permits to as many as 4 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

A 4-4 tie vote – possible since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia – would be a defeat for Obama, since it would leave in place a lower court’s ruling to block his program and make it almost impossible to implement before he leaves office.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose support Obama would likely need to win a clear victory, sharply questioned the administration’s attorney.

Kennedy said Congress, not the president, had the authority to decide which groups of immigrants could stay lawfully in the United States. “It is a legislative act, not an executive act,” Kennedy said.

Roberts quoted Obama’s 2012 remark that, under the law, he could not broadly extend relief to millions of immigrants who were here illegally.

“What was he talking about?” the chief justice asked.

U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said the president was acknowledging that he could not grant citizenship or even a path to citizenship to these immigrants. He could only offer temporary relief from deportation, he said.

Throughout the argument, the four liberal justices defended the president’s executive action and said it was consistent with past decisions by earlier chief executives to shield some immigrants.

In 2014, the administration announced a sweeping immigration program, saying it wanted to focus deportation efforts on immigrants in the country illegally who are drug traffickers, smugglers, gang members or have links to terrorists.

The executive action would have extended relief to more than 4 million immigrants who were parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

But shortly after the president announced this policy, lawyers for Texas and 25 other Republican-led states filed suit in a federal court in Brownsville, Texas, on the Mexican border. They claimed they would be burdened by the costs of issuing identification cards to the immigrants.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen said the states had standing to sue the federal government, and he put the Obama policy on hold. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 2-1 vote, upheld that order last year.