Luis Gutierrez: ‘We Will Not Be Deterred’

The morning after a federal judge halted President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) proclaimed that amnesty advocates will not be deterred.

Gutierrez said he will continue to tell illegal immigrants to prepare to sign up for Obama’s executive amnesty.

“We may be delayed, but we will not be deterred,” Gutierrez said in a Tuesday statement. “In our neighborhoods, this is about defending families and making sure that children who are U.S. citizens grow up with their parents. It is that simple. And there is a great deal of passion and determination in the fight to defend families. I am telling immigrant communities to keep preparing to sign up millions of families for protection from deportation.”

Despite Hanen’s ruling, Gutierrez claimed that “there is no good legal case to be made by the President’s opponents and legislation the hardliners are putting forward in Washington is going nowhere.” He said that “politically and practically the idea of deporting or driving out 11 million people and their families is absurd” and predicted that the effort to defund Obama’s executive amnesty “is going to backfire big-time on Republican hardliners.”

Gutierrez, who is on a nationwide executive amnesty tour, has said that it would be tougher to repeal Obama’s executive amnesty if millions of illegal immigrants sign up for it. Federal Judge Andrew Hanen noted in his opinion that without an injunction, it would be “virtually impossible” to put Obama’s executive amnesty genie back in the bottle.”

“The court agrees that, without a preliminary injunction, any subsequent ruling that finds DAPA unlawful after it is implemented would result in the States facing the substantially difficult–if not impossible–task of retracting any benefits licenses already provided to DAPA beneficiaries,” Hanen wrote. “This genie would be impossible to put back in the bottle.”