Kamala Harris Attacks Court that Stopped Obama’s Amnesty

On Tuesday, California Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Kamala Harris, who zealously champions the rights of illegal immigrants, excoriated a federal appeals court for ruling against Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration.

A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled late Monday night to uphold a lower court’s injunction that blocked Obama’s plans, which would allow illegal immigrants whose children are legal citizens or legal permanent residents who have lived at least five years in U.S. to apply for temporary legal status and work permits. Harris snapped, “The 5th circuit’s decision to uphold the injunction is preventing millions of undocumented immigrants from coming out of the shadows, submitting to background checks and paying taxes. The injunction impairs the interests of California and our residents because we know that our state will substantially benefit from the president’s actions rather than be harmed,” according to the Sacramento Bee.

Others saw the outcome from the opposite perspective, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who urged Obama to jettison his “lawless executive amnesty program and start enforcing the law today.” Southern California Public Radio quoted Chapman University law professor John Eastman arguing that the Obama administration doesn’t have the legal authority for its actions, adding, “I think it’s perfectly right. What the Obama administration has done here is make pages and pages and pages of the immigration laws completely superfluous.”

Predictably, Obama’s DOJ spokesman Patrick Rodenbush reacted, “The Department of Justice remains committed to taking steps that will resolve the immigration litigation as quickly as possible in order to allow DHS to bring greater accountability to our immigration system by prioritizing the removal of the worst offenders, not people who have long ties to the United States and who are raising American children.”

Harris’s record of supporting illegal aliens includes filing a 2012 brief against Arizona’s illegal immigration law, in which she argued that deciding which people to remove from the U.S. and when to remove them was the province of the federal government; backing a 2014 bill that gave $3 million to nonprofits offering legal aid for illegal immigrant children; and offering consumer alerts for scams targeting illegal immigrants.