The House is expected to vote in the coming weeks on a measure authorizing the Speaker to file a brief to the Supreme Court on the legality of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called it an unprecedented and “extraordinary step” at a Tuesday press conference.
{mosads}“The president is not permitted to write law — only Congress is. The House will make that very, very clear, and we will do so as an institution on behalf of the American people, on behalf of representative self-government,” Ryan said.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blasted the GOP’s move, adding that Democrats will file their own amicus brief in support of the Obama administration next week.
“Speaker Ryan is bringing up for a vote a one-sided Republican resolution that does not speak for Democrats, and will only feed the mean-spirited, anti-immigrant obsession of his party’s most extreme forces,” Pelosi said in a statement.
“The last thing our nation needs is for leaders in Congress to misuse the people’s House to divide our country and perpetuate a broken immigration system that tears apart families,” she added.
Twenty-six states, including Texas, are challenging President Obama’s 2014 executive actions to shield up to 5 million immigrants from deportations, in the case known as United States v. Texas.
The executive actions were frozen by a federal judge order last year.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in April and issue a ruling by the end of June, right in the middle of the presidential campaign.
–This report was updated at 6:45 p.m.