Goodlatte Applauds Federal Judge’s Decision to Block President Obama’s Executive Overreach on Immigration

Washington, D.C. – House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) issued the statement below after Judge Andrew Hanen of the U.S. District Court in Brownsville, Texas temporarily blocked President Obama’s unilateral immigration actions: “President Obama’s executive overreach on immigration poses a clear and present danger to our Constitution and I am pleased that the President’s actions have been temporarily halted so that the states’ lawsuit can move forward. By acting unilaterally to rewrite our nation’s immigration laws, President Obama has disregarded the will of the American people and violated the Constitution. We cannot allow one man to nullify the law of the land with either a stroke of his pen or a phone call.“This ruling underscores the importance and urgency of Congress defunding President Obama’s executive overreach on immigration. Now that the legality of the President’s executive decrees has been questioned by both the legislative and judicial branches, Senate Democrats should stop their obstructionism and allow debate on the House-passed bill that would defund President Obama’s effective rewriting of our nation’s immigration laws. We must act now on a bipartisan basis to restore the separation of powers so that we protect individual liberty for the generations to come.” In December, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte signed an amicus brief submitted to the federal court by the American Center for Law and Justice in support of the lawsuit filed by 26 states challenging President Obama’s executive overreach on immigration. Additionally, last week Chairman Goodlatte and 169 other Members of Congress sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid demanding that he stop censoring debate on the House-passed bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security for Fiscal Year 2015 and defund President Obama’s executive overreach on immigration.