More than 210 congressional Democrats are rallying around the Obama administration's push to get the Supreme Court to hear a case at the heart of the president's stalled executive actions on immigration.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), 33 Senate Democrats and 183 House Democrats filed a friend-of-the-court brief backing the Department of Justice's push for the high court to review a federal appeals court's decision to keep in place an injunction that has prevented the immigration programs from taking effect.
"We are confident that the Supreme Court will support President Obama’s decision to use the authority granted by Congress to set enforcement priorities and focus our limited resources on threats to national security and public safety, not hard-working families," Reid and Pelosi said in a statement. "President Obama took executive action after extensive legal analysis by the Department of Justice and only after Republicans refused to address our broken immigration system."
The lawmakers note in their brief that the executive actions — which allow up to 5 million immigrants in the country illegally to avoid deportation and get a work permit if they meet certain requirements — fall in line with intent of Congress.
