Obama Immigration Advisor Cecilia Muñoz Downplays Hopes For Deportation Relief

Former head of the National Counsel for La Raza and current Obama domestic policy advisor, Cecilia Muñoz, downplayed the possibility that the president could take executive action to extend deportation protections to a much wider subset of undocumented immigrants living in the She told Fusion in an interview this week that Obama does not have the authority to issue relief to those who would likely benefit from a comprehensive Senate bill. “What people are asking is that the president simply say he’s not going to enforce the law with respect to 8 million -- 10 million people, which is more than your executive authority allows you to do,” she said.

That figure is roughly the same as the number of people who would probably gain legal status under Senate bill S.744. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated last summer that of the 11.7 million undocumented immigrants currently in the country, about 8 million would benefit from the bill. And when Democrats in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus issued a memo to the Department of Homeland Security recommending how it ought to amend its deportation policies -- following a White House announcement that a review would be carried out -- they called for DHS to “suspend, delay or dispense with the deportation of immigrants who would qualify for legal status and protection under S.744.”

When DHS head Jeh Johnson convened those Democrats to the White House to discuss their recommendations on April 8, they came away encouraged, with one of them telling the Washington Post that Johnson “did not rule anything out.” But in her interview with Fusion’s Leon Krauze, Muñoz repeated Obama’s earlier assertions that executive action on deportations would not be legal, adding that it “can’t be a substitute for immigration reform.”

“The answer to this conundrum is, and has always been, legislation,” she said.