Supreme Court acts, and Obama’s immigration legacy takes a hit

President Barack Obama’s dream of what he says is a more humane immigration system was quashed by the Supreme Court on Thursday with a ruling that ended a policy meant to keep families together.

The Supreme Court, on a 4-4 tie, upheld a Texas case that had stopped Obama’s executive order that put off deportations of the undocumented parents of children who are either American citizens or legal residents.

The ruling disappointed the family of 21-year-old Samantha Huante, whose mother, Yolanda, works at farming jobs in Merced County and the Central Valley, keeping her away from Samantha and the rest of the family, who live in Southern California.

Samantha Huante told the Sun-Star that the court’s ruling was difficult to accept.

“This morning I heard about the rulings, and it’s like you know it’s bad but you don’t want to accept it,” Huante said.

Huantes and her family, with the exception of the youngest child born in the U.S, all are from Michoacan, Mexico, and came to the U.S to have better opportunities.

Huantes said her mother hasn’t been able to find another job and would have qualified under Obama’s immigration plan to obtain a work permit, possibly making it easier for her to find work closer to home.

“They (her parents) were really looking forward to it so they can have better jobs,” Huante said. “It makes me mad we can’t accept this is the land of immigrants.”

The decision also was a blow to Obama personally, all but ensuring that he will leave office in January without resolving what he hoped would be a key piece of his legacy.

The decision reflected the split in Congress and the nation, as well as the presidential campaign, over immigration. Democrats, including presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, decried the ruling for its effect on families, while Republicans hailed it for stopping unilateral presidential action.

Clinton tweeted Thursday in favor of comprehensive immigration reform. Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump’s campaign has focused on controlling illegal immigration, and he put out a statement slamming Obama’s order.

Underscoring the significance of the ruling, Obama went to the White House briefing room to repudiate it, saying that the court could not decide because it was not at its full strength of nine justices. He blamed the Senate for failing to consider his Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, to fill the vacancy after the death earlier this year of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

“For more than two decades now, our immigration system, everybody acknowledges, has been broken,” Obama told reporters Thursday at the White House. “And the fact that the Supreme Court wasn’t able to issue a decision today doesn’t just set the system back even further, it takes us further from the country that we aspire to be.”

But he stressed that the solution was for Congress to approve a comprehensive overhaul to immigration law. “Sooner or later, immigration reform will get done,” Obama said. “It’s not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when.’ ”

The court issued a rare, one-sentence decision: “The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court.”

The decision upholds a Texas court decision freezing the 2014 plan, which was never implemented, and prevents an expansion of another program that prevents children brought to the United States without documentation from being deported. More than 4 million people living in the United States without documentation are affected by the plan, though the government does not plan to step up deportations. Obama stressed that “this does not substantially change the status quo.”

The Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, would have allowed undocumented parents of children born in the United States or who are legal residents to stay in the country with a three-year renewable work permit if they had been in the United States since January 2010.

An earlier program, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, applies to children brought to the United States without documentation and is not affected by the court case except that it shut down an extension of work permits from two years to three years.

The DAPA order applying to parents, issued in 2014, never took effect. A Texas district court imposed an injunction, and it was upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, a former Texas Supreme Court judge who filed an amicus brief along with other U.S. GOP lawmakers, said: “By going around Congress to grant legal status to millions of people here illegally, the president abused the power of his office and ignored the will of the American people. The president can’t circumvent the legislative process simply because he doesn’t get what he wants.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a former GOP presidential contender, said the decision was “a rebuke of the administration’s lawlessness.”

Texas Democrat Rep. Marc Veasey saw it very differently. “Today’s decision ... is a major blow to the millions of immigrant undocumented families who continue to live in the shadows,” he said.

This story was originally published June 23, 2016 at 6:50 PM with the headline "Supreme Court acts, and Obama’s immigration legacy takes a hit."