WASHINGTON: A short-handed and deeply divided Supreme Court deadlocked Thursday on President Barack Obama’s immigration plan to help millions living in the U.S. illegally, effectively killing the plan for the rest of his presidency and raising the stakes even further for the November elections.
The hotly debated direction of America’s national immigration policy as well as the balance of power on the high court now will be determined in large part by the presidential and congressional elections. Immigration and the court vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February already were featuring prominently in the campaign.
Scalia’s vote likely would have meant an outright ruling against Obama’s immigration expansion rather than the 4-4 tie, a much more significant defeat for the president and immigrant advocates.
Democrat Hillary Clinton declared that as president she would work to restore the programs and go further. Republican Donald Trump said he would make sure Obama’s “unconstitutional actions” never came back.
Outcome of deadlock
The tie is not likely to lead to an increase in deportations since the president retains ample discretion to decide whom to deport. But the ruling stymies his effort to bring people “out from the shadows” by giving them the right to work legally in the U.S.
One of the Obama programs would have protected the parents of children who are in the country legally. The other was an expansion of a program that benefits people who were brought to the U.S. as children. Obama decided to move forward on his own after Republicans won control of the Senate in 2014 and the chances for an immigration overhaul, already remote, were further damaged.
Obama said Thursday’s impasse “takes us further from the country we aspire to be.”
The candidates vying to replace him split as plainly as the justices.
Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said that if she is elected she will defend the Obama programs “and do everything possible under the law to go further to protect families.”
Republican Trump, on the other hand, said the court outcome “blocked one of the most unconstitutional actions ever undertaken by a president” and the split decision “makes clear what’s at stake in November.”
And the people directly affected?
Mexican immigrant Cristina Molina of New York City, said she was frustrated and upset. “I feel like I’m in limbo,” Molina, 48, said through an interpreter. She has lived in the United States for 23 years and said she would have been eligible for one of the programs Obama announced in 2014.
A Supreme Court tie sets no national precedent but leaves in place a ruling by a lower court. The justices issued a one-sentence opinion, with no further comment.
A full nine-justice court agreed to hear the case in January, but by the time of the arguments in late April, Scalia had died. That left eight justices to decide, and the court presumably split along liberal-conservative lines.