DISCRETION NOT DEFIANCE

This McClatchy report is the 1st I've found that lay out the legal grounds for Pres. Obama's new immigration policy:

Did Obama exert too much executive power on deportations?
By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012

The executive branch’s authority to defer deportation, as an act of prosecutorial discretion, is not explicitly spelled out either in regulations or in statutory law. The Immigration and Nationality Act, though, gives the Department of Homeland Security the general authority to enforce immigration laws. Federal courts, moreover, have recognized that officials can exercise their discretion in determining deportation priorities.

In the mid-1970s, for instance, a native of South Korea named Soon Bok Yoon came to Hawaii legally, and then when her visa expired she sought to avoid deportation back to her home country. She failed, with appellate judges noting that the Immigration and Naturalization Service had the discretion to “grant or withhold non-priority status” when handling immigrants.


“To ameliorate a harsh and unjust outcome, the INS may decline to institute proceedings, terminate proceedings or decline to execute a final order of deportation,” Justice Antonin Scalia, quoting from another writer, added in a 1999 Supreme Court decision.