White House sees no legal path for Hillary on immigration actions

If a future president Hillary Clinton wants to go further than Barack Obama did on immigration reform using executive action, she likely has some legal homework to do.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that Obama did as much as he legally could as far as deferring deportations. So he was at a loss as to how a President Clinton could justify doing more, as the candidate promised to do on Tuesday at an event in Las Vegas.


Asked repeatedly whether additional actions would be illegal, Earnest deferred to Clinton’s team.

“There may be a legal explanation that they have that you should ask them about.”

But as far as the current White House is concerned, Earnest said, “the president was determined to use as much authority as he could” when he announced his executive actions in November.

“I would do everything possible under the law to go even further — there are more people, like many parents of DREAMers, and others with deep ties and contributions to our communities who deserve a chance to stay, and I would fight for them,” Clinton said Tuesday.

A legal opinion underlying Obama’s November order specifically ruled out such a move.

“As it has been described to us, the proposed deferred action program for parents of DACA recipients would not be a permissible exercise of enforcement discretion,” the Office of Legal Counsel’s Karl Thompson wrote in that document.

In the end, the courts may rule Obama already has gone too far. An appellate court currently is considering whether to let the administration proceed with giving some immigrants a quasi-legal status ahead of arguments over whether the president’s efforts actually are within his authority.