◼ House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said the shift is the administration's "plan to grant backdoor amnesty to illegal immigrants."
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said the shift is the administration's "plan to grant backdoor amnesty to illegal immigrants."
"They have created a working group that appears to have the specific purpose of overruling, on a `case-by-case' basis, an immigration court's final order of removal, or preventing that court from even issuing such an order," Smith said in a statement. "The Obama administration should enforce immigration laws, not look for ways to ignore them. The Obama administration should not pick and choose which laws to enforce."
Fellow Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul said the plan circumvents Congress.
"It is just the latest attempt by this president to bypass the intended legislative process when he does not get his way," McCaul said. "The fact that we have a backlog and prioritize deportations is nothing new. This policy goes a step further granting illegal immigrants a fast-track to gaining a work permit where they will now unfairly compete with more than 9 percent of Americans who are still looking for jobs."
