Napolitano opposed immigration exec order until May

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
August 20, 2012 11:43 am

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano strongly opposed the possibility of an executive order like the DREAM Act, before reversing her stance in May, reports Glenn Thrush in his e-book “Obama’s Last Stand: Playbook 2012.”

President Obama announced in June that the administration would stop the deportation of illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children. White House officials had pushed for an executive order of this kind for months, reports Thrush:

“The votes aren’t here. Pass an executive order,” Harry Reid told the White House when pressed. In fact, Obama’s political advisers had been quietly pushing Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to sign off on an executive order for months, to no effect.

The former Arizona governor–rumored by some in the White House to have ambitions of running for John McCain’s Senate seat in 2016–was dead set against it on constitutional grounds.

Many of Obama’s advisers thought she was being too cautious and suspected she had an eye on non-Latino Arizona voters, who took a hawkish position on immigration. Obama wanted Napolitano to move on the issue, advisers told me, but he respected her and needed her uncoerced support to avoid a conservative backlash.

Napolitano, Thrush reports, “abruptly reversed course” in May and proceded with the policy that may affect as many as 800,000 illegal immigrants.

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