Texas Leads Coalition Of 16 States In Lawsuit Against Obama Immigration Actions

Texas Governor elect, Greg Abbott announced Wednesday that Texas is leading a 17-state coalition suing the Obama administration over the president's executive actions on immigration. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Texas on Wednesday, and names the heads of the top immigration enforcement agencies as defendants.  Abbott, in a news conference in Austin, said the "broken" immigration system should be fixed by Congress, not by "presidential fiat."

He said President Obama's recently announced executive actions - a move designed to spare as many as 5 million people living illegally in the United States from deportation - "directly violate the fundamental promise to the American people" by running afoul of the Constitution.

"The ability of the president to dispense with laws was specifically considered and unanimously rejected at the Constitutional Convention," he said.

Abbott specifically cited Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution which states the president "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed."  He said the lawsuit asks the court to require Obama to go through Congress before enforcing laws, "rather than making them up himself."

However, a White House official defended the actions as perfectly within the president's authority.“The Supreme Court and Congress have made clear that federal officials can set priorities in enforcing our immigration laws, and we are confident that the President’s executive actions are well within his legal authorities," the official told Fox News.

Under Obama's order, announced Nov. 20, protection from deportation and the right to work will be extended to an estimated 4.1 million parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents who have lived in the U.S. for at least five years and to hundreds of thousands more young people.

In the lawsuit, Texas is joined by 16 other, mostly southern and Midwestern states, including Alabama, Georgia, Idaho and Indiana.