"This ruling underscores what the President has already acknowledged publicly 22 times: He doesn’t have the authority to take the kinds of actions he once referred to as 'ignoring the law' and 'unwise and unfair,'” US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday. “Senate Democrats — especially those who've voiced opposition to the President’s executive overreach — should end their partisan filibuster of Department of Homeland Security funding."
Texas Governor Gregg Abbott said on Tuesday that a federal judge granted his request to block US President Barack Obama's new executive action to grant millions of undocumented immigrants a permission to legally stay and work in the United States.
“Hopefully, Senate Democrats who claim to oppose this executive overreach will now let the Senate begin debate on a bill to fund the Homeland Security department,” Boehner added.
US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said the court decision was “a major turning point in the fight to stop Obama's lawless amnesty.”
"At a time when we face grave national security threats, at home and abroad, it is the height of irresponsibility for the Democrats to block this funding in an extreme attempt to save Obama's amnesty, which a federal judge has just declared illegal," Cruz said.
The senator added that Abbott and Texas Attorney General Paxton were leading a coalition of 26 states to block the illegal executive actions.
“Now that the legality of the President’s executive decrees has been questioned by both the legislative and judicial branches,…we must act now on a bipartisan basis to restore the separation of powers so that we protect individual liberty for the generations to come,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said.
The US House of Representatives introduced a $39.7 billion appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security earlier in January. However, the bill included a Republican-sponsored amendment to withhold funding for any of the president’s executive actions on immigration.
President Obama said he will veto any bill that doesn’t fully fund the department, turning the issue into a brewing political battle between his administration and the Republican-controlled Congress.
Last November, Obama announced in his executive action that as many as five million undocumented immigrants who are parents of US citizens or lawful permanent residents will have a right to obtain temporary relief from removal, as well as an opportunity to work in the United States legally and pay taxes.
