It was hard for anyone to imagine new possibilities for the White House with this schism so apparent.

Those who were there—the Service Employees International Union; AFL-CIO; Center for American Progress; Leadership Council on Civil Rights; America's Voice; the National Immigration Law Center; United Farm Workers; Center for Community Change; and others—expected another dreary appeal from Jarrett and Munoz to give House Speaker John Boehner until the August recess to try to move some form of immigration legislation. The immigration groups were fed up with what they had long regarded as Obama's doughy diffidence and had no stomach for another "stay-the-course" soliloquy from Jarrett and Munoz.

What the immigration advocates couldn't help noticing were the two empty chairs at the center of the table on the Oval Office side of the Roosevelt Room, opposite the visitors' entrance.

Jarrett and Munoz sat on either side of the empty chairs and White House counsel Neil Eggleston was to Munoz's right. Jarrett and Munoz were in the opening stanza of their immigration update when Obama and Vice President Joe Biden walked in and sat down. They stayed for more than an hour, Obama doing most of the talking and never referring to notes. Biden chimed in only when, later on, the debate turned to the current border crisis over unaccompanied minors.

Obama told the group that Boehner had informed him on June 24 there would be no votes on immigration before the midterm election but that he believed there was a good chance a comprehensive bill could pass in the next Congress. The president also told the group that Boehner urged him not to press ahead with executive action because that would make legislating more difficult next year.

Obama told the group, according to those present, his response to Boehner was: "Sorry about that. I'm going to keep my promise and move forward with executive action soon."

In the room, there was something of a collective, electric gasp. The assembled immigration-rights groups had been leaning hard on Obama for months to use executive action to sidestep Congress and privately mocked what they regarded as Pollyanna hopes that House Republicans would budge. They had been burned before. Obama reversed himself in late March and slammed the brakes on Homeland Security Department studies of slowing deportations in the name of "humane" treatment, all in the name of giving House Republicans more time on immigration reform.

Ever since, immigration groups on the left despaired over Obama's credulous paralysis. Protests ensued.

Not any longer. Obama told the groups what they had been dying to hear—that he was going to condemn House Republicans for inaction and set the most expansive legal course permissible to beef up border security, slow deportations of noncriminal aliens, and provide legal status to millions of undocumented workers—all by himself.