Obama Vows To Appeal Bush Judge’s Partisan Blocking Of Immigration Executive Order

Q Immigration?

Q — on the immigration issue today?

THE PRESIDENT: I disagree with the Texas judge’s ruling, and the Justice Department will appeal. This is not the first time where a lower court judge blocked something or attempted to block something that ultimately was shown to be lawful. And I’m confident that it is well within my authority and position of the executive branch’s prosecutorial discretion to execute this law. This will help us make our borders safer; will help us go after criminals and those that we don’t want in this country; will help people get on the right side of the law and get out of the shadows.

And keep in mind that this is something that we necessarily have to make choices about because we’ve got 11 million people here who we’re not all going to deport. Many of them are our neighbors. Many of them are working in our communities. Many of their children are U.S. citizens. And as we saw with the executive action that I took for DREAMers, people who have come here as young children and are American by any other name except for their legal papers, who want to serve this country, oftentimes want to go into the military or start businesses or in other ways contribute — I think the American people overwhelmingly recognize that to pretend like we are going to ship them off is unrealistic and not who we are.

So I’ve also said throughout this process that the only way we’re going to get a broken immigration system fully fixed is by Congress acting. And we know that there has been bipartisan support in the past with comprehensive immigration reform. I held off taking these executive actions until we had exhausted all possibilities of getting congressional action done. With a new Congress, my hope has been that they now get serious in solving the problem. Instead what we’ve had is a series of votes to kick out young people who have grown up here and everybody recognizes are part of our community, and threats to defund the Department of Homeland Security, which would make it even harder for us to protect our borders and to keep our people safe.

So my strong advice right now to Congress is, if they are seriously concerned about immigration, about our borders, about being able to keep criminals out of this country, then what they should be doing is working together and working with the administration for a comprehensive immigration policy that allows us to continue to be both a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. And certainly they should start funding the Department of Homeland Security so that they can go forward with all the functions that Republicans say they want carried out, including strong border security functions.

But with respect to the ruling, I disagree with it. I think the law is on our side and history is on our side. And we are going to appeal it. For those who are now wondering whether or not they should apply, we are going to refer those questions to the Department of Homeland Security that has already begun the planning process. And we will be prepared to implement this fully as soon as the legal issues get resolved.