The next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said President Barack Obama’s expected executive actions would go beyond the dreams of even King George III.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, spoke on the Senate floor Wednesday night about a series of administration actions that Republicans have found objectionable, ranging from the use of recess appointments to the transfer of five Taliban prisoners out of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay for the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

“It is no exaggeration to say that the freedom of the American people is at stake. That’s what the framers believed,” Grassley said, before quoting from James Madison in Federalist 51.

Grassley contended that what the White House is planning on immigration policy would go beyond the bounds of enforcement discretion and the powers of the executive branch, comparing it to a power that King George III of England would not have had in 1776, going back nearly a century before that.