Perry Says Suing Obama Admin Over Amnesty a “Very Real Possibility”

AUSTIN, Texas — “It’s a very real possibility” that the state of Texas would file a lawsuit to block President Barack Obama’s plan to enact sweeping immigration reforms by executive order, said Texas Governor Rick Perry in a speech at the Republican Governors Association’s (RGA) annual meeting in Boca Raton, Florida on Wednesday. 

Obama is scheduled to unveil his plans in a prime time speech on Thursday evening, to allow millions of illegal immigrants to avoid deportation by what is known as “deferred action,” a move that was also strongly opposed by the other Republican Governors at the meeting, leading to immigration dominating the discussions on the first full day of the RGA’s event, as reported by the AP. Other governors in attendance, including Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisconsin) and Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-Louisiana), agreed with Perry that a lawsuit would be an appropriate response to Obama’s executive order.

Perry described Obama’s plan as not only “unconstitutional,” but also predicted that it would backfire politically on Democrats, saying that Obama was sticking “a finger in the eye of the American people” and putting his party in long term jeopardy of ever regaining control of the Congress.

Perry’s successor, Governor-elect Greg Abbott, took a similarly critical stance against the President’s plan in an appearance on Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor, saying that Obama did not have the legal authority to waive immigration laws for millions of people at once. Obama’s plan is “hoax on the people he is offering it to, because he doesn’t have the legal authority to grant them any rights whatsoever,” said Abbott. “To grant them rights requires official legal action, either by an administrative agency or by Congress.” 

As Breitbart Texas’ Kristin Tate reported, Abbott has vowed to file suit in federal court “as soon as possible” after Obama signs his executive order. “We are prepared to assert legal action against the President because we believe that what the President is doing is completely unconstitutional,” said Abbott. “He has a legal obligation to enforce the laws, [and] immigration is assigned by the Constitution to the United States Congress to determine, not the President.”

Perry’s press secretary, Lucy Nashed, provided a statement to Breitbart Texas affirming the Governor’s view of Obama’s plan as unconstitutional, and a magnet for continued future illegal immigration. 

“Executive action on illegal immigration is unconstitutional, confrontational, and contrary to the will of the American people, who expect the president to work with our elected representatives in Congress to find a solution to this issue,” said Nashed. “This action is an abuse of executive power that will mark President Obama’s place as one of the most divisive presidents in our nation’s history. Further, the fact remains that any such action would continue to disregard the root cause of our illegal immigration issues, which is the federal government’s abject failure at securing our border.”

“This summer, we saw firsthand the tragic effects of the Obama Administration’s DACA policies with an influx of illegal immigrants, many of them unaccompanied children, along the border,” she concluded. “Texas’ successes in border security, despite federal immigration policies that too often serve as magnets for illegal immigration, prove what the governor has long said: we cannot have meaningful immigration reform without first securing the border.”

Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter @rumpfshaker.