Obama’s immigration plan splits Supreme Court

Justices debate executive power to decide deportations

President Obama’s effort WASHINGTON to offer temporary protection from deportation to more than 4 million undocumented immigrants ran into opposition from conservative justices on the Supreme Court Monday, but the outcome of the case remained unclear.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy didn’t give much ground on whether Texas has the right to sue the federal government and whether the president has the authority to go around Congress.

“What we’re doing is defining the limits of discretion” for who the government can and cannot deport, Kennedy told U. S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. “And it seems to me that that is a legislative, not an executive, act.”

The court’s more liberal justices said Obama’s deferred- action program merely tells undocumented immigrants who qualify that “you will not be deported unless we change our minds,” Justice Elena Kagan said.

The administration fought with Texas and 25 other states, as well as with the House of Representatives, which had blocked the president’s effort to confer legal status to some of the USA’s more than 11 million illegal immigrants.

Much of the debate before the eightmember court, shorthanded since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February, focused on whether the program would grant undocumented immigrants “lawful presence.” “That phrase has caused a terrible amount of confusion,” Verrilli said. “We are not trying to change anybody’s legal status.”

Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito didn’t buy that explanation.