Brewer: Obama plan is `backdoor amnesty' for illegals

PHOENIX -- Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has denounced President Obama's new deportation policy as "backdoor amnesty for hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of illegal aliens."

"The Obama administration cannot get its amnesty schemes through Congress, so now it has resorted to implementing its plans via executive fiat," Brewer said after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the new policy Thursday. Napolitano said authorities will focus on deporting illegals with criminal records and review on a case-by-case basis the plight of illegals who are students, were brought to the United States by parents or whose work permits have expired.

Brewer said the plan is "backdoor amnesty," and, "Especially disturbing is that it comes in the wake of the Obama administration sanctioning the sale of weapons to Mexican drug cartels -- even as border states such as Arizona come under threat from those same illicit organizations. With this announcement, the president is encouraging more illegal immigration at the exact moment we need federal focus on border security."

Brewer said that, just last month, Obama had rejected the idea of bypassing Congress and imposing immigration reform, telling the National Council of La Raza that, "That's not how our system works. That's not how our democracy functions. That's not how our Constitution is written."

The governor said, "President Obama got it right last month and got it really wrong today."

Brewer, who is waiting for a U.S. Supreme Court decision on Arizona's tough new immigration law, said, "Those of us who truly care about the rule of law will remember the President's actions of today. We need to remind President Obama that we elected a president that serves beneth and law and did not anoint a king that is above the law."