WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama’s carefully cultivated Hispanic coalition was starting to splinter.
Immigration legislation on Capitol Hill was going nowhere. Deportations were nearing 2 million under Obama’s watch. And the president was resisting calls to use executive actions to address the issue.
In early March, Obama’s usually reliable supporters vented their frustration with a one-two punch to the White House: a scathing speech by a prominent immigration advocate who derided the president as “deporter in chief,” then a threat from Hispanic lawmakers to vote on a resolution criticizing Obama for the soaring deportations.
The moves sent the White House scrambling. Hours before the vote, Obama summoned three of the lawmakers to the Oval Office to tell them he was ordering Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to study how the administration could enforce immigration laws “more humanely.”
That order set off nearly nine months of intense internal deliberations over the scope of Obama’s presidential powers and political wrangling between the White House and Democrats over how potentially provocative executive actions would impact the midterm elections.