The nation's highest court on Thursday deadlocked over the White House's plans to temporarily shield from deportation millions of immigrants living illegally in the U.S., keeping President Barack Obama's executive actions on hold for now.
The U.S. Supreme Court's 4-4 vote — the late Justice Antonin Scalia's seat remains vacant — leaves a lower court's injunction in place. However, the parties in the case could ask the court to reconsider the case when someone is appointed to replace Scalia. Or, the lower court judge in Texas who issued the injunction could move forward and rule on the case. Judge Andrew Hanen's decision could then be appealed all the way back to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The court issued only a one-page decision Thursday morning that says: "The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided court."
Georgia is one of 26 states — led by Texas — that have been fighting in court to block the president’s executive actions, arguing they amount to an unconstitutional end run around Congress.
“The Supreme Court’s action today leaves in place a decision affirming that President Obama cannot evade the Constitution,” Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens said in a prepared statement. “Our nation’s laws, the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches, and the Constitution, must be followed.”
Among the people affected by the court’s decision is Marie Cruzado Jeanneau, a native of Peru who now lives in Lawrenceville. Her family came here to start a better life and then overstayed their tourist visas. Jeanneau and one of her sisters have received temporary deportation deferrals and work permits through the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program or DACA. Obama’s executive actions would expand DACA by making the work permits and deportation deferrals good for three years, up from two. As of March 31, there were 22,729 Georgians approved for the program.
Jeanneau’s parents would be eligible for similar relief under the president’s executive actions because one of their daughters was born in the U.S. To be eligible for the program — called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents or DAPA — applicants must have lived in the U.S. continuously since Jan. 1 of 2010 and submit to background checks. About 4 million people could be eligible for DAPA nationwide. As many as 125,000 of them are in Georgia, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank that evaluates migration policies.
Jeanneau is concerned about her mother because she does not have legal status in the U.S. and routinely drives without a license to work. “We are always afraid for her to be stopped and for her to be taken into jail and for us not to see her again,” said Jeanneau, who is studying Spanish and business management at Oglethorpe University. “She is the backbone of the family just as my dad.”
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