Immigration fight enters new phase
Federal judge won’t lift hold on Obama’s executive action.
Government, judge spar as court refuses to lift injunction
HOUSTON — To hear the White House tell it, a federal judge in Texas “has wrongly continued to prevent those lawful, common sense policies from taking effect.”
The judge, meanwhile, says of Obama administration attorneys: “Whether by ignorance, omission, purposeful misdirection, or because they were misled by their clients, the attorneys for the Government misrepresented the facts.”
And so the legal jousting continues over President Barack Obama’s executive action shielding millions of people from deportation and the judge’s order putting those efforts on hold.
In a pair of rulings late Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen refused a government request to allow the Obama programs to resume while broader issues are being litigated. The move leaves unchanged the status of up to 5 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
A coalition of 26 states led by Texas is fighting Obama’s executive action. The action, announced last November, expanded the pool of people who could receive some legal immigration standing to include the parents of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.
Obama also wanted to increase from two years to three years the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, designed to help so-called Dreamers.
For Jose Palacios, of Tampa, Fla., the rulings were no surprise.
“We knew his stance … what his intentions are: to continue to hurt immigrant families across the country,” Palacios said. “It looks like we have to continue to fight.”
Palacios, 23, has been shielded from deportation under DACA. His mother — who came to the United States illegally from Mexico more than 20 years ago — had hoped to apply for a similar program for parents known as DAPA before the lawsuit. Three of Palacios’ siblings have DACA status; five are citizens.
Since the lawsuit began, he said, his mother has grown discouraged. “Sometimes my mom loses hope that anything is going to happen,” Palacios said.
He said he planned to explain Tuesday night’s rulings to her, adding that he would be in New Orleans soon to protest ahead of the 5th Circuit’s hearing on the government’s appeal.
Earlier this week, a panel of the 5th Circuit rejected a challenge to Obama’s 2012 executive action, upholding a lower court’s earlier ruling in a case involving Mississippi and some border agents.
In the latest actions, Hanen issued two orders — one refusing to lift his injunction halting the administration’s programs, the other detailing what he called the federal government’s misleading statements.
At issue, lawyers for the government say, is confusion over a pair of Obama’s immigration actions.
The Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, would affect more than 4 million people who have lived in the United States for at least five years and are the parents of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.
The DAPA action also included a provision to change DACA. And this is where the confusion began.
The DAPA executive action included expanded deferred action for qualified DACA applicants, from a two-year reprieve to three years. Although 26 states were suing to block DAPA, federal government lawyers allowed DACA applicants to apply for a threeyear reprieve.
More than 100,000 of them did.
Hanen, at times visibly angry in the earlier hearings, wasn’t informed of the accepted applicants for weeks after the suit began and threatened to sanction the Justice Department if he found that government lawyers had misled him about the rollout of the immigration actions.