Obama: Confident Amnesty Lawful, Justice Dept Will Appeal

Tuesday at the White House, President Barack Obama reacted to the news that a Texas federal judge has blocked his executive order on immigration.

The president said:

I disagree with the Texas judge’s ruling. and the justice department will appeal. This is not the first time where a lower court judge has blocked something or attempted to block something that ultimately was shown to be lawful. And I’m confident that it is well within my authority, and the perdition of the executive branch of prosecutorial discretion execute this policy which will help us make our borders safer. Will help us go after criminals, and those that we don’t want in this country. Will help people get on the right side of the law. And get out of the shadows.

Keep in mind that this is something that we necessarily have to make choices about because we’ve got 11 million people here who were not all going to deport. Many of them are our neighbors. Many of them are working in our them are working in our communities. Many of their children are U.S. Citizens. As we saw with the executive action I took for dreamers, people who had come here as young children and are American by any other name except for their legal papers, who want to serve this country often times want to go into the military or start businesses or in other ways contribute, I think the American people will recognize we can’t  pretend we are going to ship them off. It’s unrealistic and not who we are. So I’ve also said throughout this process that the only way we’re going to get an immigration system fully fixed is by congress acting and we know there has been bipartisan support in the past.

I held off taking these executive actions until we had exhausted all possibilities of getting congressional action done with a new congress my hope has been they now get serious in solving the problem. Instead we have had the series of votes to kick out young people who have grown up here and everybody recognizes a part of our community. And threats to defund the Department of Homeland Security which would make it even harder for us to protect our borders and keep our people safe.

So my strong advice right now to congress is if they are seriously concerned about immigration, about our border, about being able to keep criminals out of this country, then what they should be doing is working together and working with this administration for a comprehensive immigration policy that allows us to be a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. Certainly, they need to start funding the Department of Homeland Security so they can go forward with all the functions that Republicans say they want carried out including strong border security functions.

But with respect to the ruling I disagree with it. I think the laws are on our side and history is on our side. We’re going to appeal. For those now wondering whether or not they should apply, we are going to refer to those questions to the Department of Homeland Security that’s started to planning process and we will be prepared to implement this fully as soon as the legal issues get resolved.

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