Washington, DC – Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-IL) commented on the filing of an amicus brief supporting the U.S. government’s position in the United States v. Texas case about whether certain aspects of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration will be allowed to move forward. A total of 225 Democrats in Congress (186 in the House and 39 in the Senate) filed the brief with the U.S. Supreme Court and Democratic Leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid issued a joint release earlier today (English and Spanish).
Congressman Gutiérrez was instrumental in both urging President Obama to take executive actions on immigration to keep families together in the first place and in building support for those actions – and their defense in court – both inside and outside the Capitol.
The following is a statement by Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez:
The Democrats are extraordinarily united behind our leadership in favor of sensible enforcement priorities, but I wish we could leave the politics out of it. Republicans plan to ram through a partisan vote next week on their own pro-deportation amicus brief so they can appear to be relevant in the immigration fight we are hearing from the campaign trail in all its shrill vitriol.
I don’t think Republicans would pull this legislative stunt unless they were worried about the outcome of the case on its merits before the Court. As a matter of law, the President is on solid ground, has acted in accordance with what previous presidents have done, and has acted within the clear parameters Congress has passed and affirmed on multiple occasions.
We need to move forward as a nation and get beyond fantasies of mass deportation and sending millions of consumers, producers, and hard-working families away. The Supreme Court, not Members of Congress, will rule later this year and I am confident the nation will turn the corner towards rational deportation and detention policies. Ultimately, it is still on Congress to act to alleviate the great harm our current policies are doing to American families and our economic well-being.
Rep. Gutiérrez represents the Fourth District of Illinois, is a Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, is a Member of the House Judiciary Committee and is the Co-Chair of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. An op-ed related to immigration and the Supreme Court ran in the Boston Globe on Feb. 25: GOP politics of exclusion all but guarantee a Democratic decade.
Alicja Otap
