Tit-for-tat fight between senators over Barack Obama's immigration plan

The fight over Barack Obama’s controversial executive order to allow millions of illegal migrants to remain in the US didn’t focus on immigration reform or the economy on Thursday. Instead, senators went back and forth over procedural matters.

In a hearing on Reining in Amnesty, Texas v United States and its implications, the members of a Senate subcommittee exchanged views on Utah Republican Mike Lee serving as president and made references to John Lennon in a debate about the November executive order.

The subcommittee, chaired by Ted Cruz, was held in the aftermath of February injunction issued by Judge Andrew Hanen of the Southern District of Texas, which blocked the implementation of Obama’s executive order.

The focus was not on the policy implications of this decision but rather the legal merits of Hanen’s injunction and whether it was an appropriate interpretation of administrative law.

Republicans such as Cruz railed against Obama for what they saw as unlawful act. At the beginning of the hearing, the first-term senator quoted Obama’s 2013 statement that he couldn’t use deferred action to allow many illegal immigrants to remain in the country because “I’m not the emperor of the United States.”

Cruz went on to offer hypotheticals comparing Obama’s decision to avoid deporting undocumented immigrants who have not committed any felonies to a president ordering the IRS to no longer collect taxes in excess of 25% of a person’s income. While Cruz noted that he found this to be “terrific policy”, he thought it would still violate the rule of law.

In contrast, Democrats like Chris Coons of Delaware, spoke of their concerns about an over-mighty judiciary (a reverse of the typical partisan back and forth on issues like gay marriage where Democrats are often more comfortable with the courts having a broad purview).

The first-term senator worried that issued like immigration should be “played in the legislative branch, not the judicial” and worried that it violated the Constitutional limitation that courts could only hear “cases and controversies” and not political disputes.

Hanen’s injunction is not likely to last. It is expected to be appealed to the 5th circuit court of appeals in New Orleans where legal scholars believe it likely to be overturned. In the meantime, it prevents the Department of Homeland Security from taking any steps to implement Obama’s executive order.