(CN) — A 4-4 split by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday killed the Obama administration's offer of deportation reprieve to millions of undocumented immigrants.
There are an estimated 5 million to 6 million undocumented immigrants who qualified for deportation relief, but the Fifth Circuit stopped the programs from taking effect, and the Supreme Court deadlock leaves that ruling in place by default.
The stalemate also means President Barack Obama will leave office without making any progress on immigration, which he vowed to do after Congress failed in 2014 to pass comprehensive reform.
Obama's presidency has been a study in contrasts for the nation's roughly 11.3 million paperless immigrants. His administration has deported record numbers, while offering ways to legalize the presence of parents of U.S. citizens and some people who were brought to the United States as children.
With no opinion or dissent itself accompanying the court's deadlock order today, Obama's next step remains uncertain.
The government could ask U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, who enjoined the programs, for a hearing on the merits, but Brianne Gorod, chief counsel of the Constitutional Accountability Center, called that outcome unlikely.
"As a practical matter, Judge Hanen, who has repeatedly demonstrated his hostility to the administration's immigration initiatives, is not going to provide the government with relief," Gorod said in a statement.
"Given that a 4-4 ruling will not create binding law for the rest of the country, it's possible there could be lawsuits filed in other parts of the country, but it's unclear how courts would view those suits given that the district court imposed a nationwide injunction," Gorod added. "As a result, a 4-4 decision could produce a tremendous amount of legal confusion."
Texas and 25 other Republican-controlled states argued in their December 2014 lawsuit that Obama overstepped his authority by issuing an executive order on immigration and that he did not follow the process for new rules.
Although the programs would grant "lawful presence" status to qualifying immigrants, giving them the right to apply for driver's licenses and federal work permits, the Obama administration emphasized that the programs would not offer amnesty or a pathway to citizenship, a sticking point for hard-line immigration opponents in Congress.
The Department of Homeland Security unveiled Deferred Action for Parents of Americans in November 2014, alongside an expansion of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program the agency started in 2012. Respectively, each program is usually abbreviated to DAPA and DACA.
The government has offered the programs as solutions to a fundamental problem in U.S. immigration policy: Homeland Security's $6 billion immigration enforcement budget is not enough to deport everyone illegally present in the country.
The same day Obama announced DAPA, his administration issued a memo ordering immigration authorities to prioritize deporting serious criminals and new illegal arrivals, a process known as prosecutorial discretion.
Obama emphasized at a White House press conference on Thursday that the Supreme Court stalemate does not affect the 2012 version of DACA, a program for which more than 730,000 young immigrants, so-called Dreamers, have qualified.
The Department of Homeland Security will also continue to prioritize deportation of felons, gangbangers and recent border-crossers, Obama said, keeping the pressure off otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for years.