Washington – This Friday President Obama’s administration formally requested to the Supreme Court to review the president’s controversial immigration programs blocked from moving forward last year. The program meant to ease deportation threats to millions of undocumented immigrants.

A year ago, President Barak Obama announced the implementation of “Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents”, or DAPA, a new program which would allow undocumented immigrant parents to continue in the country and also obtain temporary work permits. The administration also said that they would expand the existing “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” program, or DACA, which does the same for some undocumented young people who came to the U.S. as children.

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The program that would help approximately 4.3 millions of immigrants was severely opposed by a group of 26 states, led by Texas, claiming that actions on DAPA and DACA were unconstitutional. The programs was blocked from moving forward on February based on these comments. Photo: Shoe Bat

The appeal was presented by the Justice department on Friday. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. wrote in court briefs filed. “A divided court of appeals has upheld an unprecedented nationwide injunction against implementing a federal immigration enforcement policy of great national importance, and has done so in violation of established limits on the judicial power,” as he presented the appeal.

Obama’s administration had been under pressure to take the immigration issue to the Supreme Court as fast as possible. There is only a brief period of time for the nine justices to agree to hear the case term. The Supreme Court must take up the case before its term ends in late June, or allows it to slip to the court’s next term, which begins next October; otherwise the destiny of the immigration initiative will be on Obama’s successor’s hands.

Brianne Gorod, appellate counsel for the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center said that the court could easily hear the case in the current term. The counsel added that in fact if the court didn’t hear the case it would risk the appearance of engaging in politics.

Meanwhile, activists in dozens of cities across the country gathered on Friday to ask the Supreme Court to decide the destiny of deportation relief before June, when the term ends. Marisa Franco, Director of an immigrant rights campaign said in a statement that they couldn’t wait for another year until the court reached a decision for a program that only included half the people who need relief.

Source: CNN