Texas' Next Governor: I'm Suing Obama

Greg Abbott isn't happy about the president's immigration action
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 23, 2014 4:10 PM CST
Updated Nov 23, 2014 5:00 PM CST
Texas' Next Governor: I'm Suing Obama
Texas Governor-elect Greg Abbott addresses media during a news conference, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2014, at the Capitol in Austin, Texas.   (AP Photo/Austin American-Statesman, Jay Janner)

The governor-elect of Texas plans to do something he's done thirty times before: sue President Obama's administration. This time, it's over Obama's executive action that could grant working papers to nearly five million illegal immigrants. "We think we have standing better than any other state to be able to assert this claim against the president," Greg Abbott tells Fox News Sunday, Politico reports. His reasoning: The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals action, which let some children of illegals remain in the country, apparently affected Texas. Abbott argues "that in the aftermath of this presidential order, we’re going to face the same challenges in Texas that we did after the 2012 DACA."

He also disputed the notion that legal limitations in DACA and Obama's new executive action can curb illegal immigration. "Understand this: The people coming from Central America are typically not legal scholars who look into the depths of what the president is saying," says Abbott. It's Mexican drug cartels "who were selling" DACA to people in Central America, he adds, and "using them and exhorting from them the passageway towards Texas." He also contends that Obama's action goes against the US Constitution's "Take Care" clause, the Dallas Morning News reports; that clause says the president must ensure that laws are faithfully executed. Obama "has abdicated his responsibility to uphold and enforce this Constitution," Abbott says. (See Obama's argument for the action, and why the GOP plans to fight him tooth and nail.)

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