US President Barack Obama used his executive powers as much as he could to fix the broken immigration system in the country, the White House said today.
"The President was determined to use as much of his authority as he could to try to bring some much-needed accountability to our broken immigration system, and that was reflected in the announcement that he made back in November on this," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said.
At the same time, there are limitations to presidential executive powers as the Republican-controlled Congress is blocking a comprehensive immigration reform, Earnest said.
The White House response came a day after Hillary Clinton, a Democratic presidential aspirant, called for a comprehensive immigration reform, saying this would be part of her four big fight during her election campaign.
Earnest said that the Obama administration continues to be extremely confident with the legal position and its legal arguments, and that's working its way through that process in Texas.
There are other elements of these reforms, however, that are moving forward, which the White House is implementing, he said.
"The most prominent of those is some of the discretion that our law enforcement officers are exercising when it comes to prioritizing the cases of those individuals who pose a genuine threat to the community. Those are the individuals that we're seeking to protect broader communities from," Earnest said.
"We did take the extraordinary step of releasing the Office of Legal Counsel opinion, where we talked about the limits of executive authority when it comes to taking steps to reform our broken immigration system," Earnest said.
