House GOP has until August recess to get immigration reform done

Two important reports in the Los Angeles Times today on immigration reform efforts. First,  Brian Bennett and Christi Parsons report, Slowing deportations could hurt chances for House immigration action:

After some of President Obama’s closest political allies unexpectedly accused him of enforcing immigration laws too aggressively, the president ordered his aides this spring to find ways to ease the pace of deportations.

Now, some of those same advocacy groups are quietly urging the White House to slow that effort down, warning that ordering changes without congressional approval could spook House Republicans and kill any chances of a legislative fix this year.

House Speaker John A. Boehner’s staff has been drafting bills in a bid to offer a Republican response to the comprehensive immigration and border security bill that passed the Senate last June. Boehner has been unable to muster enough support to move any of his bills in the GOP-controlled House, however.

A White House move to scale back deportations would unite House Republicans in opposition and end the push for reform, said Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, an advocacy group. “It would kill it right away.”

“Republicans are looking for an excuse not to do it,” agreed Angela Kelley, an immigration expert at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with close ties to the White House.

Kelley said Obama should consider delaying the review of deportation procedures that he ordered in March, and give the House time to act. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson is expected to complete the review and make his recommendations by June.

“The last thing we need is for the president to be doing things that can be interpreted as selectively enforcing the law,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), who supports immigration reform, said in a telephone interview.

Diaz-Balart said the window for the House to act is before it adjourns for its August recess. “This is not the time to use unilateral action.”

White House aides say they are loath to order a delay, however, and Obama made it clear Tuesday that he wouldn’t sign a bill unless it contains a way for the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally to obtain legal status and ultimately become citizens.

Senior White House advisors say Obama won’t use administrative powers to order sweeping changes. Rather, they say, Homeland Security officials may move forward with smaller fixes while Obama presses House Republicans to either pass the Senate bill or come up with something he can accept in its stead.

In remarks to police chiefs Tuesday before a meeting at the White House, Obama said he’s wasn’t “hellbent” on getting House Republicans to agree to all the provisions of the Senate bill.

But he said he wouldn’t sign a bill unless it contains “a way for people to earn some pathway to citizenship.”

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In the White House meeting, Johnson said he was considering limiting when immigration agents can contact local jails to ask them to hold undocumented immigrants, according to two police chiefs who attended the session.

Under a program called Secure Communities, immigration officials are automatically notified whenever someone without legal immigration status is booked. Federal agents can ask the jail to detain the person for possible deportation.

Johnson said he wanted to focus more on deporting violent criminals instead of people who have violated only immigration laws, the police chiefs said.

“What we heard today was a commitment to reboot and refocus on what is truly a threat — that is, criminals,” Art Acevedo, chief of police in Austin, Texas, said after the meeting.

Under Obama’s instructions to make deportation policy more humane, Homeland Security officials are drafting new guidelines to avoid unnecessarily separating families.

Christi Parsons follows up on President Obama’s not ‘hell-bent’ on Senate immigration bill comment to law enforcement officers:

President Obama signaled Tuesday that he is open to compromise on immigration reform, saying he is not “hell-bent” on getting everything from the Senate immigration bill into the version that finally hits his desk.

But Obama said the measure that finally passes must hew to some “core principles,” including some sort of “pathway to citizenship” for immigrants in the country illegally, a point of contention in the debate.

In remarks to law enforcement officers visiting the White House, Obama argued that comprehensive immigration reform would make their work easier because it would undermine criminal enterprises and help police focus on their jobs.

The remarks come as the Obama administration presses forward with a full review of its deportation practices, with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson charged with making sure they’re “humane.”

Even as the agency tries to clean up the current practices, though, senior advisors to the president say they aren’t planning to make major changes through the use of his administrative powers. Rather, they say, the president plans to keep pressing House Republicans to either pass the Senate bill or to come up with something acceptable in its stead.

* * *

In his remarks on Tuesday, Obama said reform advocates have public opinion on their side, and suggested that more and more Republican opinion leaders are coming to the conclusion that some kind of reform is necessary.

“The closer we get to the midterm elections, the harder it is to get things done around here,” Obama said. “So we’ve got maybe a window of two, three months to get the ball rolling in the House of Representatives.”

Police, business leaders and evangelical Christians will be crucial to passing a reform measure, Obama said.

“We’re not hell-bent on making sure that every letter of what’s in the Senate bill is exactly what ultimately lands on my desk for a signature, but there’s some core principles that we have got to get done,” Obama said.

In addition to improving border security and legal processes, he said, “we’ve got to make sure that there’s a way for people to earn some pathway to citizenship.”

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post adds, Obama to GOP: On immigration, you have three months:

On one level, Obama was simply acknowledging the reality of the Congressional calendar. But on another level, it seems clear he was tacitly referencing the fact that if Republicans don’t act by the August recess, he’ll almost certainly have to do something to ease deportations himself. After all, if Obama thinks reform is dead if it doesn’t happen by August, that can only mean all the guns from the left will turn on him to act alone, right?

Yet despite that, all indications are that the White House really does seem to think there is an outside chance House Republicans could still act on immigration reform, even though many reporters have knowingly written this off as impossible. Why?

Part of it, I think, lies in the belief that House Republican leaders really do see the August recess as a deadline of sorts for them. It’s become widely acknowledged consensus that Obama will have to do something on his own if Republicans don’t, and if that happens, it will be even harder politically for Republicans to act legislatively later. GOP Rep. Mario Diaz Balart has said that. So has Dem Rep. Luis Gutierrez. This could mean that, if Republicans don’t act by August, they could lose their chance to place their stamp on immigration reform — and begin to get right with Latinos — before the next presidential election.

I’d be very surprised if Obama and Boehner have not had extensive conversations about all of this stuff and about the respective dances both sides must go through here. In his remarks today, Obama was also careful to say GOP leaders must be granted the “political space to go ahead and get it through their caucus.”

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Those following the Tea Leaves closely from the left think GOP leaders have given Diaz-Balart, who has legislative language ready to go on some kind of legalization proposal for the 11 million, the tacit go-ahead to round up as many House Republicans as he can. “The accepted wisdom among advocates following this closely is that Boehner wants to get his done, and that Diaz-Balart and others are trying to corral Republicans so Boehner can schedule votes before the August recess,” Frank Sharry, the head of America’s voice, says

No one knows whether enough House Republicans will support Diaz-Balart’s proposal — or any form of legal status under any circumstances – to allow Boehner to move forward. More to the point, no one knows whether Boehner will have the stones to move forward even if a lot of House Republicans are tacitly okay with it getting a vote, since that would unleash the fearsome wrath of the right.

“Whether or not Obama explicitly meant the two-to-three-months remark as a suggestion that he will act alone if Republicans don’t, he was delivering them a wake-call: It’s probably now or never.”