BY: MJ LEE

IN POLITICO

For Arizona Republicans on Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court’s ruling on their state’s tough immigration law may have been a mixed bag, but the lawmakers are certain about one thing — the utter failure of the Obama administration’s immigration policy.

Moments after the court announced its decision to uphold the “show me your papers” provision of Arizona’s S.B. 1070, Reps. Jeff Flake and David Schweikert were quick to spin the highly anticipated ruling.

Flake told Fox News there was “some degree of victory” for Arizona, and took aim at the current administration.

“The troubling part is the federal government is spending all this time in court suing the state instead of doing what we need to do to secure the border, and that’s what is troubling to Arizonans,” the congressman said. “I think what we do and what we focus on now is just to continue to try to get the administration to focus on securing the border. When we can do that, then we can move on and do all the other items that we need to do, and there are many. But it has to start with securing the border.”

Schweikert, meanwhile, accused the administration of lacking a serious immigration policy.

“I’m not sure the rest of the country understands what the federal government’s failure has done to my state, done to my county, done to my community, the cost — both from education and healthcare and incarceration,” the Republican lawmaker said in a separate appearance on Fox.

He added that the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the law’s controversial provision, which requires police to verify the immigration status of someone who’s been stopped for questioning and is suspected of being undocumented, will allow his state to crack down on illegal immigrants in a way that the administration has not.

“Now, what does it mean when you have a traffic stop, and the officer, with the proper due diligence is able to ask them, are you here illegally? I know that is a very controversial position, but it also now allows the state, I believe, to step in and do much of what the federal government has been failing to do,” he said.

Echoing his Republican colleagues, Arizona Rep. Ben Quayle seized the opportunity to hit the president for recently issuing a policy directive that stopped the deportation of some children of illegal immigrants.

“We have to make sure that we’re actually standing by what the constitutional frame work is with separation of powers and co-equal branches of government, which is something that the president just eviscerated the other Friday,” he told Neil Cavuto on Fox News.

Quayle also nudged GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney to call out Obama for the controversial policy change.

“Gov. Romney should be up and talking about this and really hammering it home saying, ‘Look, we’re a nation of laws, we need to enforce our laws and we can’t let the president go around Congress and disregard how our legislative process is supposed work.’ I think that’s a winning argument and I hope that he’ll actually take that up and make this case to the American people that the president is going against our constitutional frame work,” he said.