Exclusive: Obama to hold town hall meeting on immigration
02/20/15 09:30 AM—UPDATED 02/20/15 03:07 PM
By Amanda Sakuma
Despite setbacks from a federal court decision and a determined GOP Congress aimed at blocking his sweeping executive actions, President Obama plans to forge ahead by speaking directly to the immigrant community that must now weather yet another delay to protections from deportation.
The president will hold a town hall meeting in Miami on Wednesday to address the Latino community after a Texas judge temporarily blocked the immigration actions from moving forward this week. The event, presented in both English and Spanish and held at Florida International University (FIU), will be led by Telemundo and MSNBC host José Díaz-Balart.
“We’ve chosen this town hall forum because the president has a desire to engage in a genuine conversation about issues important to the community,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told msnbc. The televised event will also provide Obama a platform to reach Latinos across the country, Earnest continued, while engaging with Miami’s vast immigrant community. “It makes for an interesting, dynamic place and a great symbol of how immigration has made our country unique.”
Obama first introduced his executive actions to great fanfare last November by extending temporary work status and a shield from deportation to more than 4 million undocumented immigrants. The unilateral actions were met with swift resistance from Republicans who believed the president overstepped his authority by protecting broad swaths of the U.S.’s undocumented immigrant population. In Congress, Republicans have sought a strategy to starve the Department of Homeland Security’s funding in efforts to unravel the unilateral actions. And this week, the measures hit a major hurdle when U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen sided with a lawsuit brought by 26 states, and issued a preliminary injunction on the unilateral actions.
The decision marked a crushing blow to hundreds of thousands of young, undocumented immigrants who had waited months for the first day of enrollment to open up. Instead, just one day before the program was slated to launch, administration officials announced on Tuesday they would comply with the judge’s orders and postpone the executive actions indefinitely.
The Obama administration remains adamant that the law is on its side and that the executive actions will ultimately move forward as planned. The Justice Department swiftly responded to the ruling by announcing Tuesday that officials plan to appeal Judge Hanen’s decision. “We will continue to press this through the legal process, and we are confident that this will prevail,” Earnest said. But days out from the judge’s decision, administration officials still could not say what action the DOJ planned to take.
One option promoted by some advocacy groups would be for the Justice Department to request an emergency stay from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. But still, the administration’s arguments would have to sway a three-judge panel of conservatives in New Orleans, in a process that would likely take a matter of weeks. And even if the appeals court lifts the injunction, it’s likely that further appeals would kick the issue up the chain to the Supreme Court.
Even in the best case scenario for the administration, time is not on its side.
In a 123-page ruling issued around midnight Monday, Judge Hanen did not directly question presidential powers or Obama’s authority to use prosecutorial discretion in determining how the administration carries out immigration laws set by Congress. Instead, Hanen said the administration ultimately failed to comply with a small procedural step in failing to seek comments from the public before implementing the new programs.
Hanen largely sided with arguments brought by the 26 states that the unilateral measures will cause a resource drain for local governments. “The court finds that the government’s failure to secure the border has exacerbated illegal immigration into this country,” he wrote. “Further, the record supports the finding that this lack of enforcement, combined with this country’s high rate of illegal immigration, significantly drains the states’ resources.”
“We’ve chosen this town hall forum because the president has a desire to engage in a genuine conversation about issues important to the community.”
WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY JOSH EARNEST
The Texas judge’s decision is likely to fan flames in Republican efforts to dismantle the president’s measures through a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Congressional Republicans hit a roadblock when Democrats in the Senate filibustered a bill to keep DHS running through September on the condition of rolling back the president’s executive actions on immigration both past and present. Lawmakers have just until Feb. 27 to avert a DHS shutdown.
The looming shutdown and recent court ruling triggered rounds of rallies across the country this week as undocumented immigrants protested Republican-led efforts to roll back protections.
“The baseless Republican lawsuit is just another desperate attempt to delay the inevitable, and to keep people like my mother living in fear of deportation,” Cristina Jimenez, managing director of United We Dream said in a statement Thursday, pressing for the administration to file for an emergency stay. “As Republicans continue pushing their mass-deportation agenda in the courts and on Capitol Hill, it is the President’s responsibility to act immediately, use every resource available to ensure that millions of people will be able to be protected from deportation immediately.”
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/exclusive...ng-immigration
As DHS Funding Deadline Looms, Obama Announces Telemundo Townhall on Immigration
by Charlie Spiering
20 Feb 2015
As the funding deadline for the Department of Homeland Security approaches, President Obama plans to go after Republicans directly for trying to use the fight to block his executive actions on immigration reform.
The White House announced a town hall meeting on immigration together with MSNBC’s Latino host José Díaz-Balart and the Spanish language news network Telemundo.
“We’ve chosen this town hall forum because the president has a desire to engage in a genuine conversation about issues important to the community,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, as he announced the event. The televised event will also provide Obama a platform to reach Latinos across the country.
The event will be held next Wednesday in Miami, to highlight the state’s immigration community. That’s two days before the funding deadline for DHS.
The White House decision to highlight Obama’s actions on immigration is the latest effort to overcome a setback to his plans after a Federal District Court in Texas put his amnesty plan on hold. The administration says it will appeal the decision to a higher court.
Members of the Obama administration say it’s important to fund the Department of Homeland Security. But Senate Democrats have refused to allow a House-passed DHS funding bill that blocks amnesty to come to the floor for consideration.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...n-immigration/
In Miami, Obama will again try to defend his immigration record
By Patricia Mazzei
02/25/2015 7:09 AM
For President Barack Obama, it has become a torturous routine — appearing on Spanish-language television to try to defend his record on reshaping the nation’s immigration laws.
On each occasion, he has been reminded that he broke his 2008 campaign promise to reform the system and that his administration is on track to deport more people than any other president in U.S. history.
Yet he will go at it again Wednesday in Miami, a majority Hispanic city in America’s largest swing state, this time in an attempt to reassure people in the country illegally that his latest executive action, which would shield up to five million people from deportation, stands on strong legal footing. A federal judge in Texas temporarily suspended the order last week, ruling that the president had overstepped his power. The Justice Department has appealed.
“My administration will fight this ruling with every tool at our disposal, and I have full confidence that these actions will ultimately be upheld,” Obama wrote in an op-ed published Tuesday by The Hill.
The president is expected to take questions Wednesday directly from undocumented immigrants at the taping of an event at Florida International University that will later air nationally on Miami-based Telemundo and sister network MSNBC. He will also likely address the Homeland Security Department budget, which is pending in Congress amid a political fight over funding Obama’s executive immigration actions. A Friday deadline looms.
“President Obama is on defense over his immigration overreach and is struggling to find a legal response to a federal court blocking his unprecedented executive action,” Ruth Guerra, director of Hispanic media for the Republican National Committee, said in a statement. “So he’s doing the only thing he knows how to do: hit the campaign trail.”
Though billed as a “town hall,” tickets for Wednesday’s private event were distributed by organizers and not made publicly available. Telemundo and MSNBC rented the public Graham Center facility at FIU’s main campus for about $39,000, according to a copy of the contract.
Obama’s visit comes at a time when his legacy on immigration is in danger. Unable since 2009 to convince Congress to give the nation’s up to 12 million undocumented immigrants permanent legal status, he has used his powers to force the issue in the twilight of his presidency.
The first Obama immigration order, signed in 2012 and known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, remains in effect. The second, signed in November to expand DACA and establish Deferred Action for Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, was halted in Texas as part of a lawsuit filed by 26 states, including Florida.
Those actions — one granting temporary legal status to people brought into the country illegally as children, the other expanding that program and creating a new one applying to parents of U.S. citizens and residents — appear likely to be Obama’s only legacy on immigration, which has already become entangled in a new presidential campaign.
Consider the reception Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, a potential presidential candidate who pushed for immigration reform in 2013, got on his recent book tour.
In Miami last Friday, Rubio was heckled — and given the middle finger — by young immigration activists who faulted him for not doing more to help the undocumented. In New Hampshire three days later, a Republican bluntly asked Rubio if he would commit to deporting everyone who’s in the country illegally, a suggestion the senator called unrealistic.
“I’m the only one who gets heckled by both sides of the immigration debate,” Rubio had concluded in Miami.
Come September, the date of the first scheduled Republican presidential debate, forget anyone in Congress proposing immigration legislation, U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart told the Miami Herald’s editorial board Monday. One of his brothers, Telemundo and MSNBC anchor José Díaz-Balart, will moderate the Obama interview.
“The right goes further to the right. The left goes further to the left,” the Miami Republican said. “The possibility of meeting in the middle vanishes.”
None of the Miami Republicans in Congress — Diaz-Balart and Reps. Carlos Curbelo and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen — need persuading from the president to support reforms. But they have criticized how Obama, who didn’t push an immigration law when both chambers of Congress were controlled by Democrats, has now sidestepped the legislative branch altogether.
“Obama is not the only culprit,” Diaz-Balart said. “But he’s not been helpful.”
Immigration advocates know they’ve been “played” politically, said Cristina Jimenez, co-founder and managing director for United We Dream, who plans to attend Wednesday’s event.
“It’s really difficult to forget” the number of deportations under Obama — more than 1.6 million — said Jimenez, whose parents brought her to New York from Ecuador illegally when she was 13. But Republicans have not found a way to speak to the immigrant community, added Jimenez, who is now a legal resident.
“Right now, he’s the only one who’s proposed a solution,” she said. “Even though it’s temporary.”
PRESIDENTIAL TRAFFIC ALERT
Motorists can expect delays on Wednesday afternoon in and around Florida International University and Miami International Airport during President Barack Obama’s visit.
The event, billed as a “town hall,” will be taped at FIU and later aired nationally on Miami-based Telemundo and sister network MSNBC on Wednesday night.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/poli...e11101739.html
