LOS ANGELES -- There is no place in the country that will be more affected by the Supreme Court battle over President Barack Obama's plan to shield millions of illegal aliens from deportation than sprawling Los Angeles County.
There are an estimated 1 million illegal aliens in Los Angeles County, about 400,000 of whom could be eligible for the protected status that Obama says would bring them "out of the shadows."
County officials plan an aggressive program to sign them up should the justices give the green light. Arguments in the case are scheduled for today.
"I'm looking at the return the county gets," said Hilda Solis, Obama's former secretary of labor who is now chairman of the powerful Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. "Do I want them to pay taxes? Absolutely. Do I want them to be established, with some form of identification? Yes. I think we're all better off, we're safer."
It is a familiar view from a Democratic politician in the state with the country's largest concentration of immigrants.
But the state with the second-largest concentration -- Texas -- is leading the fight against what it and 25 other states say would saddle them with the cost of providing benefits for millions of people newly eligible for work permits and government programs. The crux of the states' legal argument is that the program, regardless of its merits, represents an unlawful power grab by the president.
"It is not whether this is the right solution or not," said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose efforts have led lower courts to block the plan from being implemented. "It's whether the president is acting outside his constitutional authority."
It is true that justices will concentrate on whether Obama overstepped his authority and ignored legal procedures in November 2014 when he announced the immigration changes that Congress refused to enact. And the court also will consider whether Texas and the other states have the legal standing to interfere in immigration policy that the White House insists belongs to the executive branch.
But the societal impact of immigration is debated in the court filings. And there is a stark partisan and ideological divide in the case that Daniel Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, calls "Donald Trump huge."
It is impossible to ignore the political backdrop as well.
The case arrives during a presidential election year in which Trump promises a wall along the border to keep immigrants out, and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is adamant he would immediately reverse Obama's plans should the court uphold them. On the Democratic side, both candidates have taken positions on immigration to the left of the president.
From California, a broad coalition of educators, religious leaders, business executives, politicians and police have coalesced around a message that it is time for a cease-fire.
"In the last half-century, California has attracted more immigrants -- and done more to grapple with immigration policy -- than any other state," said one brief that contends Obama's plan would result in "stronger, safer, and more prosperous communities."
It added, "The identity of a thriving city or state depends on the sense of community shared by its inhabitants and those inhabitants in turn draw their dignity and their identities from the social and religious communities they build."
It is a far different statement from the one California voters made in 1994, when they overwhelmingly passed Proposition 187. It withheld from illegal aliens public education, all manner of state services and nonemergency health care. The proposal was ruled unconstitutional.
A generation later, the state has gone through "all that bumpy stuff that the rest of the country is experiencing now," said Manuel Pastor, executive director of the University of Southern California's Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration.
"We understand that undocumented folks are now part of the state's fabric," Pastor said. "One of six people you touch in the labor force is not here legally. I mean, my God, that's how Southern California functions."
Obama said it was a recognition of that reality that led him to announce the deportation "guidance" after House Republicans blocked an effort to pass a comprehensive immigration bill.
The plan is called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents. It would allow illegal aliens in those categories to remain in the country and apply for work permits if they have been here for at least five years and have not committed felonies or repeated misdemeanors.
More than 4 million immigrants could qualify for the program and a simultaneously announced expansion of an earlier program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which affects those who were brought to the country as children.
The Obama administration says it is doing nothing more than setting priorities about whom to deport. As a practical matter, it argues, Congress has given the administration only enough money to deport annually no more than about 400,000 of the nation's estimated 11 million illegal aliens.
The money should be used to find and deport those with criminal violations, the administration says, rather than those who have established a life here and "anchor families" that would be torn apart by deportation.
But a federal district judge in Texas and then an appeals court ruled 2 to 1 that the plan "is much more than nonenforcement: It would affirmatively confer 'lawful presence' and associated benefits on a class of unlawfully present aliens."
The ruling was welcomed by Texas officials. But it is Obama's message that resonates in California, where illegal aliens have become a powerful political force even if many of them cannot vote.
A Section on 04/18/2016