Tea-Publicans and wingnut pundits in the conservative media entertainment complex like to bandy about words like “lawless” and “unconstitutional” when talking about President Obama’s executive order for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, drivers licenses for the DREAMers, etc., because they are political propagandists who want to portray the president as a tyrant who should be impeached as a means to fire up their wingnut base (this is how they shake down the ignorant rubes who listen to them rant all day and separate them from their money). They are con men, pure and simple.
On purely legal grounds, their unhinged propagandist accusations are unadulterated bullshit. The feckless media villagers really have to stop being stenographers who rotely report “Republicans say…” and, oh I don’t know, pick up the damn phone and talk to an immigration lawyer who actually knows what the hell he or she is talking about! Is that too much to ask?
I have previously posted this piece by Greg Sargent of the Washington Post, Lawyers agree: Obama has broad authority to act on deportations:
With Obama administration officials debating how aggressively to use unilateral action to shield people from deportations, more than 100 immigration law professors have signed a letter to the President (.pdf) arguing that he has expansive legal authority to act to temporarily protect additional groups from removal — and that this authority is rooted in statute, court opinion, regulations, and precedent.
The letter (.pdf), which was shared with this blog before its release, is designed to make the case to media and opinion-makers that Obama has maximum legal room to maneuver — which could shape how much political space the administration thinks it has on this difficult and explosive decision.
