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Manuel Vazquez, 20, of Raleigh, N.C., front, attends a May Day immigration reform rally by the White House in Washington, on May 1, 2010.(Photo: Jacquelyn Martin, AP)

With another devastating ruling by a federal appeals court, President Obama may berunning out of options in his quest to remake the nation's immigration system before he leaves office.

As congressional leaders made clear they were not interested in passing a sweeping immigration rewrite, the president vowed to use his executive authority to protect undocumented immigrants and modernize the legal immigration system. That strategy was dealt a major blow Monday when the5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down his programto protect up to 4.3 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.

The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it would appeal that decision to the Supreme Court.That means the best-case scenario for Obamais a favorable Supreme Court ruling in the summer of 2016, which would come in the final months of his presidency and would inject the issue squarely into that November's presidential election.

In the meantime, immigration advocates say there are a few opportunities to cement his legacy remain."There's still a lot of room for ending his administration on a very, very high note," said Marielena Hincapi, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center.

Critics of the president's immigration strategy feel he should take Monday's ruling as the clear indicator that he's gone far enough. Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said Obama should now adopt the viewpoint that he is responsible for carrying out the immigration laws on the books and stop "playing legal games" to wrestle power away from Congress.

"It would be beneficial for the country at large if he would give up this divisive and partisan manipulation of immigration law and restore the center, restore respect for our laws, for our democracy and its citizens," Stein said.

Whatever Obama decides, his remaining options are limitedand far from the bold actions he's tried to take to protect many of the country's 11 million undocumented immigrants.

USA TODAY

Appeals court deals crippling blow to President Obama's immigration plan

David Leopold, an immigration attorney in Cleveland who used to head the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the president can ensure that his immigration enforcement agencies are focusing their deportation efforts on the most dangerous undocumented immigrants in the country. The Obamaadministrationhas deported about 400,000 undocumented immigrants a year, but has tried to increase the percentage of those who fall under categories that include people with extensive criminal records, gang ties or who pose threats to national security.

Leopold said that message has not been adopted by all Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, or Department of Justice prosecutors, leading to the ongoing deportations of undocumented immigrants who have been leading largely peaceful lives in the U.S.

"That needs to stop, and that can stop," Leopold said.

Hincapi said the president could also work to end the practice of using detention centers to hold mothers and children who are fleeing gang violence in Central America. That practice became commonplace last year, when nearly 70,000 unaccompanied minors rushed acrossthe southwest border, leading to the use of "family detention" that Hincapi calls "one of the darkest blemishes in our history." Thousands of mothers and children remain in those detention centers around the country awaiting rulings on their requests for asylum or refugee status.

"The president has the opportunity scale that back and turn that around," she said.

Obama could also work unilaterally to make changes to the legal immigration system to allow more foreign workers to enter the country and stay here longer.

For example, the administration is considering a plan to allow foreign students who graduate from American universities with degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to stay in the country for a longer period of time after they graduate. The administration has also considered creating a "start-up visa" for foreign entrepreneurs trying to start tech businesses in the U.S.

Either of those changes would help those industries tremendously, said Todd Schulte, executive director of FWD.US, an advocacy campaign for the tech industry founded my Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley titans.

"It's important to realize that there are hundreds of thousands of high-skilled immigrants whose lives could be dramatically improved andbillions and billions of economic activity unleashed," through those kinds of openings, Schulte said. "We can't stress strongly enough how much this must be a priority."

As it stands, the president's immigration legacy remains mixed.

On the one hand, he's been called the "deporter-in-chief" for continuing to deport so many immigrants each year and breaking up families where some immigrants have legal standing in the country and others are undocumented. On the other, he created a program in 2012 that has protected nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children from deportation, and protected other groups, including the relatives of U.S. military members.

With few other options remaining for Obama, it will likely be up to the Supreme Court to decide that part of his legacy.

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Obama running out of immigration options