Ordinarily, President Obama’s November decision to grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants through executive order would have exactly zero bearing on D.C. politics. The District’s elected officials are almost uniformly Obama supporters and they have long supported policies making the city more hospitable to the undocumented.
Attorney General Karl A. Racine announced Monday the District has joined 12 states, led by Washington and California, that are supporting the Obama administration in a federal lawsuit brought by Texas and more than 20 other states seeking to overturn the executive order.
Obama’s action would grant a temporary reprieve from possible deportation for more than 4 million people living in the U.S. who do not have legal residency status, most of them the parents of American citizens. It is unclear how many D.C. residents would be affected by the Obama order; a Pew Hispanic Center report estimated the District’s illegal immigrant population stood at around 25,000 in 2010.
The brief co-signed by Racine argues that Obama’s order “will substantially benefit states, will further the public interest, and are well within the President’s broad authority to enforce immigration law.”
Racine — himself an immigrant, who came with his family to America from Haiti as a young child — said in a statement that he is “proud to support the President’s wise and lawful actions here to protect our immigrant families in the District and throughout the country.”