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Former homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano is supporting executive action by President Obama to change immigration policy if Congress fails to pass a broad overhaul, citing what she calls her successful 2012 push to delay deportations of many younger immigrants.

If Congress refuses to act and perform its duties, then I think its appropriate for the executive to step in and use his authorities based on law ... to take action in the immigration arena, Napolitano, a lawyer and former U.S. attorney in Arizona, said in an exclusive interview with The Washington Post.

Napolitano spoke ahead of a speech she is scheduled to give Monday in Georgia in which she will publicly detail for the first time the sometimes heated internal administration debate over the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Begun by Obama over fierce objections from some conservatives, it has deferred the deportations of more than 580,000 young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.

In the speech, Napolitano describes a complicated and fraught 2012 debate inside the administration in which White House lawyers peppered her with tough questions and some Department of Homeland Security officials questioned whether the program would overwhelm the governments ability to implement it.

There were serious logistical concerns, Napolitano says in her prepared remarks, a copy of which was obtained by The Post. It would run the risk of appearing to make law and usurping Congress. ... Who knew how it all would turn out?

Napolitanos perspective is especially relevant as the administration debates whether to take further executive action on immigration, including a possible major expansion of the 2012 relief program. With a comprehensive immigration-law overhaul dead for now on Capitol Hill, Obama had promised to act on his own by summers end, and the administration had been preparing new measures that would potentially allow millions of illegal immigrants to remain in the United States without fear of deportation.

But last month, the administration bowed to political concerns and informed lawmakers and advocacy groups that Obama had delayed any action until after Novembers midterm elections.

Napolitano, who left the DHS last year and is president of the University of California system, declined to say in the interview what she thought of the presidents decision or to detail what executive decisions she thinks he should make without Congress. But should he choose to act, she said, the DACA program provides a good petri dish on how you set it up, the budget stuff, all of those nuts and bolts.

The 2012 decision was galvanized by Congresss failure two years earlier to pass the Dream Act, which would have given legal status and a path to citizenship to dreamers young immigrants brought to the country as children.

Initially, Napolitano says in her speech, to be delivered at the University of Georgia law school, she was unsure whether DHS a relatively new agency created after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 could handle the mechanics of an executive response by the administration. Meanwhile, she said, dreamers remained in limbo, ensnared within the sputtering debate over immigration reform.

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Napolitano backs executive action on immigration policy