Steve King bristles at ‘lawless land of Mexico’ criticizing judge’s immigration ruling

Rep. Steve King said Wednesday that a federal judge’s ruling has undercut Democrats’ filibuster of the homeland security funding bill, and urged his colleagues to stand strong on defunding not only the new deportation amnesty but also the 2012 program that granted tentative legal status to so-called Dreamers.

Mr. King, Iowa Republican, also bristled at Mexico’s criticism of the ruling, which halted the new amnesty and which the Mexican government said it “regrets” because it denies illegal immigrant Mexicans benefits they’ve earned.

“I shouldn’t be surprised that the lawless land of Mexico doesn’t understand the Constitution or the rule of law in the United States,” Mr. King said in a telephone interview.

Judge Andrew S. Hanen, a federal district judge in Brownsville, Texas, ruled this week that Mr. Obama’s program announced in November 2014 to halt deportations and give work permits and Social Security numbers to illegal immigrant parents likely broke administrative laws. The judge issued an injunction, which also halted an expansion of a 2012 program that halted deportations and gave work permits to Dreamers, who are illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. But the judge didn’t upend Mr. Obama’s original 2012 program for Dreamers, which has granted tentative legal status to more than 600,000.

House Republicans have passed a spending bill that halts both the 2012 and 2014 amnesties, while funding the rest of the Homeland Security Department. Senate Democrats, though, are filibustering that legislation in order to defend Mr. Obama’s amnesties.

With the two sides at a deadlock, some Senate Republicans have called on their colleagues to drop the 2012 amnesty provisions from their bill and only try to cancel the new 2014 program, arguing that otherwise they will be seen as trying to deport young adults who are the most sympathetic figures in the immigration debate.

Mr. King urged colleagues not to draw those kinds of lines.

“I don’t want to grandfather in lawlessness,” he said.

He also said the new court ruling strengthens Republicans’ hand in the fight, and he said his constituents back home aren’t clamoring for the GOP to retreat in the face of a possible shutdown of the Homeland Security Department.

Mr. King said it was “a milestone” that Mr. Obama himself said he would respect the judge’s ruling and not accept applications for his amnesty programs.

“Now it becomes even more clear that the Senate Democrats who are trying to block this by protecting the president — they’re the ones who are saying they’re not interested at all in their oath to defend the Constitution,” Mr. King said.