WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders are finalizing a plan that would authorize the chamber to take legal actions against President Barack Obama over his executive actions on immigration.
Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, pitched the plan to GOP lawmakers during a closed-door meeting Tuesday, describing a resolution that would authorize the House to take a variety of legal actions, which could include a formal lawsuit.
“We are finalizing a plan to authorize litigation on this issue — one we believe gives us the best chance of success,” Boehner said, according to a source in the room.
Leaders have not finalized a course of action, but the authorization language would allow the House to take steps that could include filing a fresh lawsuit against the president or joining a case already in federal district court involving two dozen states. That suit alleges that Obama overstepped his constitutional authority in finalizing his November 2014 actions, which seek to defer the deportation of millions of certain nonviolent immigrants.
Drew Hammill, spokesman for Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, called the news “an embarrassing admission of failure.”
“Republicans’ radical anti-immigrant legislation is dead on arrival. Once again, House Republicans are crawling to the courts to relieve them of their responsibility to govern,” she said in a written statement.
House Republicans are also looking to continue chipping away at the executive actions legislatively. However, their options are proving to be limited since they do not have veto-proof majorities in both chambers of Congress.
The House adopted a handful of GOP amendments to a wrap-up spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security that would turn back the November orders, as well as other executive actions stretching as far back as 2011. Those amendments, however, are ultimately expected to be stripped out in the Senate. House leaders pulled a border security bill from the floor this week amid growing opposition from conservatives.
So far, the president’s immigration actions have withstood one legal challenge. A federal judge on Dec. 24 threw out a challenge from Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, saying that the plaintiff could not prove direct harm from the actions and lacked standing.
