WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Tuesday it will ask the Supreme Court to rule next year on the president’s plan to allow millions of undocumented immigrants to remain and work in the United States without fear of deportation, a ruling that could inflame the political debate in the 2016 presidential election.
After a series of recent setbacks for Obama in court, there is a new urgency among White House officials and advocates to start enrolling immigrants before the president leaves office in January 2017.
Administration officials remained hopeful that a victory at the high court in June would give them enough time to launch a program that Obama has made the centerpiece of his bid to remake immigration laws through executive action. The program has yet to begin, delayed nearly a year after Texas and 25 other states won an injunction that was upheld by a federal appeals court late Monday.
The legal losses, along with pledges from Republican presidential candidates to reverse Obama’s actions, have ramped up efforts to get the program implemented before a new president is inaugurated. Obama aides acknowledged that it would be virtually impossible in that time to enroll the estimated 5 million immigrants who could be eligible for three-year deportation deferrals.
The first order of business will be getting the case accepted by the high court for next spring. Generally, the Supreme Court must accept a case by January in time to hold oral arguments and decide it by the end of June, when the justices leave for the summer. John P. Elwood, a Washington lawyer who keeps track of petitions for SCOTUSblog, said the Obama administration would need to get its petition to the Supreme Court by the end of this month and oppose any attempt by Texas to get an extension in filing its own brief.
Obama has made reforming the immigration system a top second-term priority, and he acted unilaterally last November after Republicans in Congress blocked a comprehensive bill. The program, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, allows parents of U.S. citizens to apply for work permits, provided they have lived in the country for at least five years and have not committed other crimes. It is modeled after a 2012 program that has deferred the deportations of more than 600,000 immigrants who entered the country illegally as children.
Although the GOP has denounced the president’s executive actions, the issue is politically fraught for both sides. Latinos are among the fastest-growing voting blocs in the nation, and they overwhelmingly supported Obama’s reelection victory over Mitt Romney in 2012. Democrats already have sought to make immigration reform a central issue in the 2016 campaign.
