FOX "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace" - Transcript: Executive Order on Immigration

Interview

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WALLACE: The battle over President Obama's decision to ignore Congress and take executive action on immigration extends far beyond Washington.

In Texas, attorney general and newly elected Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has announced what he's going to do.

Governor-elect Abbott joins us now.

And welcome for the first time to "Fox News Sunday."

GREG ABBOTT, R-TEXAS, GOVERNOR-ELECT: Thank you, Chris.

WALLACE: You've said you are going to sue President Obama for taking this executive action. On what grounds?

ABBOTT: Several grounds. One is what the president has done violates the Take Care Clause under Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution, requiring that the president take care to faithfully execute the laws.

Now, understand this is no little trinket in the Constitution. At the constitutional convention itself, they considered whether or not the president should have the authority to dispense with enforcing certain laws, and they decided, no, they didn't want to give the president that authority. They wanted to ensure the president would be limited in his authority and ensure that the president would take care to execute the laws passed by Congress.

In this case, the president is violating that Take Care Clause.

WALLACE: Let me pick up on that, and you can give other reasons in a moment, because a number of legal scholars say that the president can make the argument that he's faithfully executing the law. They point out that in the last fiscal year, the Border Patrol arrested half a million for crossing the border, and so therefore, he's faithfully executing the law, they would argue, and that this is simply a matter of prosecutorial discretion.

ABBOTT: Two points about that. One is what the president is doing by this doesn't have anything to do with the arrests he's making on the border. It has to do with the fact that he is dispensing with the immigration law as it currently exists and is rewriting that law. That was the purpose behind the "take care to faithfully execute the law" in the Constitution.

Second, this is not prosecutorial discretion. Prosecutorial discretion is when a president or the attorney general, or whoever, decides they are not going to prosecute someone because of lack of resources or something like that. What the president is doing here is giving affirmative benefits to people who are here illegally. That is not prosecutorial discretion. That is rewriting the immigration laws to help those the president wants to help.

WALLACE: OK. Experts say that states may have a better chance than Congress in being granted standing, that they are an interested party and that the case is legitimate, being granted standing in the courts, because they can demonstrate actual harm, that they have suffered damages from the action taken by the president, harder for Congress to do that.

As the attorney general of Texas, about to be the new governor of Texas, what harm, what harm will Texas suffer as a result of the president's actions?

ABBOTT: Texas suffered direct consequences from the 2012 DACA. And that is what led --

WALLACE: That was the deferred action that allowed a lot of the DREAMers to stay in the country.

ABBOTT: Exactly. And in the aftermath of the 2012 DACA is when we begin to see 1,000 people a day coming across the border, often telling border patrol agents the reason why they were coming across the border, and not hiding when they got here, but actually turning them in into border patrol agent, was because they believed the 2012 DACA allowed them to come here.

We believe also that in the aftermath of this presidential order, we're going to face the same challenges in Texas that we did after the 2012 DACA.

WALLACE: Even though the president says that if you just come over the border now, you're not covered?

ABBOTT: The president also said the same thing after the 2012 DACA.

Understand this -- the people coming from Central America are typically not legal scholars who look into the depths of what the president is saying. Remember this also, Chris, and that it was the cartels in Mexico who are selling this to the people in Central America, using them and extorting from them the passageway toward Texas.

So, we are going to continue -- the state of Texas will continue to come out of pocket. Right now, we are spending more than $15 million a month just for law enforcement alone. We have thousands of children who have come here as unaccompanied minors in our schools that Texans are having to foot the bill for.

I sent a letter to Jeh Johnson asking --

WALLACE: He's the secretary of Homeland Security.

ABBOTT: Asking the federal government to reimburse the state of Texas for the millions of dollars we are incurring in cost because of the DACA. We will be amending that to ask for reimbursement for what we are facing in the aftermath of this presidential order.

WALLACE: You're saying that these presidential actions encourage more immigration, illegal immigration, and that that is costing the state money in terms of government services?

ABBOTT: It's an absolute fact in the aftermath of DACA. We believe that that proves the same thing will happen in the aftermath of this presidential order.

As a result, one other thing, just real quick, Chris. And that is -- this goes always to what we saw, what the Supreme Court said for jurisdictional purposes in Massachusetts versus EPA, and it's Parens Patria Doctrine, when Massachusetts wasn't harmed nearly as much in Massachusetts versus EPA, as Texas has been in this case.

So, we think we have standing better than any other state to be able to assert this claim against the president.

WALLACE: I was surprised to learn as I studied up on in taking this action, that when you take the president to court on this executive action that he has announced this week, this will be 391st lawsuit that you have filed against this president. How come?

ABBOTT: Because this president, more than any other president, has abdicated his responsibility to uphold and enforce this Constitution.

Remember this also, of those cases that have been finally decided, I have won a majority of those cases. Look what happened recently this past summer when the United States Supreme Court said the president violated the Constitution with the appointment to the National Labor Relations Board.

Look at what's going on now that the United States Supreme Court has taken another case involving Obamacare because of executive action. We have a president who feels completely unconstrained by the Constitution. Attorneys General across the United States of America are the leaders in stepping up holding this president accountable to the United States Constitution. If we don't have the Constitution enforced, it will lead to dire consequences in our future.

WALLACE: You have called this president a lawless president, a lawless chief executive. Really?

ABBOTT: Whenever the president of the United States not only doesn't follow the law, but adamantly refuses to follow the law, the way that he's done with regard to this particular executive order, the way that the president has unilaterally altered the terms of Obamacare, that is the epitome of lawlessness. And once the chief executive of the United States of America refuses to abide by the law and the Constitution of the this country, that leads to dire consequences for our future if we don't have attorneys general making sure the president abides by the law.

WALLACE: Governor-elect Abbott, thank you, thanks for flying in from Texas. We will follow your lawsuit in the courts, sir.

ABBOTT: Thank you.

WALLACE: Congratulations as well.

ABBOTT: My pleasure. Thanks.

WALLACE: Good to have you here, first, I hope of many times.

ABBOTT: I look forward to it.

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