Federal judge temporarily blocks Obama's executive actions on amnesty for undocumente

IamAman · 01:32 AM

shit.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local...immigrants.ece

Quote:

A federal judge in Texas granted a temporary injunction Monday halting President Obama’s executive-order driven amnesty program, according to a statement from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

The ruling from Judge Andrew Hanen means the administration will have to halt its executive actions on immigration for now.

The ruling came at the request of Texas and 25 other states to block implementation of Obama’s plans.

The president's efforts could allow 5 million undocumented immigrants to apply to stay in the U.S. and seek authorization to work.

The judge blocked implementation to allow time for resolution of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the president's executive orders.

The temporary injunction halts a measure that would allow an undocumented immigrant who is the parent of a U.S. citizen or permanent resident to request deferred action and employment authorization if they meet certain criteria. That was set to take effect in May.

http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/federal-j...mnesty-orders/

Quote:

A federal judge in Texas on Monday granted a temporary injunction halting President Obama’s executive-order driven amnesty program.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen ordered the government not to proceed with any portion of the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, DAPA.

In his order the federal judge said the court found “that at least one plaintiff has satisfied all the necessary elements to maintain a lawsuit and to obtain a temporary injunction.”

“The United States of America, its departments, agencies, officers, agents and employees and Jeh Johnson, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; R. Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of United States customs and Border Protection; Ronald D. Vitiello, deputy chief of United States Border Patrol, United States Customs and Border Protection; Thomas S. Winkowski, acting director of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and Leon Rodriguez, director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services are hereby enjoined from implementing any and all aspects or phases of the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents … ”

The outline of plans was “set out in the Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson’s memorandum dated November 20, 2014.”

The injunction is until “a final resolution of the merits of this case or until a further order of this court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit or the United States Supreme Court,” the judge ordered.

He cited the Obama administration’s failure to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act.

Hanen also ordered that federal officials and agencies are further enjoined from implementing “any and all aspects or phases of the expansions (including any and all changes) to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.”

That was the program begun several years ago by Obama.

The judge also explained the defendants will be allowed to “reapproach this court for relief from this order, in the time period between the date of this order and the trial on the merits, for good cause, including if Congress passes legislation that authorizes DAPA or at such a time as the defendants have complied with the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act.”

He scheduled a conference call for counsel following a Feb. 27, 2015, deadline for a schedule for the case to be processed.

In Austin, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said, “President Obama abdicated his responsibility to uphold the United States Constitution when he attempted to circumvent the laws passed by Congress via executive fiat, and Judge Hanen’s decision rightly stops the president’s overreach in its tracks. We live in a nation governed by a system of checks and balances, and the president’s attempt to by-pass the will of the American people was successfully checked today. The district court’s ruling is very clear – it prevents the president from implementing the policies in ‘any and all aspects.’”

It’s one of two pending cases challenging Obama’s amnesty.

The other actually was developed first, and was thrown out at the district court level.

But it now is on a fast track before an appellate court in Washington, D.C.

It was filed by attorney Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, on behalf of Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona.

Klayman told WND he’s waiting now for the government to respond to the appellate court.

“We want the D.C. court to enter a preliminary injunction, stopping everything in its tracks,” he said. “We’re confident that they will agree with us.”

Obama’s amnesty plans are forecast to allow at least another five million illegal aliens in the U.S. to be given a legal status, where they could hold jobs, driver’s licenses – and critics say they would even be allowed to vote.

WND had reported earlier on the significance of the case, which was brought by 26 states against the federal government. It was predicted to go far beyond amnesty and immigration.

The fight will determine whether the United States can be run by a president and his decrees, or by a chief elected official who enforces the laws Congress writes, according to Mark Krikorian, chief of the Center for Immigration Studies, which watches the immigration situation.

“If I were a Republican politician, I wouldn’t even be arguing this on the basis of immigration,” he told WND in an interview. “I would be talking about this as just the latest and most egregious example of a president’s rule by decree.”

He said the coming dispute, which very well may extend into the 2016 presidential election or beyond, is going to decide “the balance of powers, whether Congress actually makes law or is an advisory body like the U.N. General Assembly, which is how Obama sees it.”

Obama already has challenged America’s laws a multitude of times, simply issuing orders to make changes to the Obamacare law, and on a variety of other issues, all without the benefit of a decision by Congress, which originally wrote the laws.

The fight over amnesty is one of two focal points – the other is Obamacare – of a letter-writing campaign to encourage GOP members of the U.S. House to replace Speaker John Boehner.

The “Dump Boehner Now” campaign allows voters to reach every single Republican House member with hard-copy letters asking them to reconsider their choice as speaker. The letter says House members had the chance to stop Obamacare and amnesty, but Boehner failed to take advantage.

Joseph Farah, WND founder and campaign organizer, set up the letters campaign. He said the opposition to Boehner is based on the Obamacare and amnesty program that voters rejected in the 2014 midterm elections.

The letter explains to members of the U.S. House that two issues have “prompted Americans to turn in droves to the Republican Party in November 2014 – Barack Obama’s blatantly unconstitutional executive action to provide amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, and the deliberately deceptive restructuring of America’s health-care system through Obamacare, which threatens to unravel the greatest health delivery system in the world.”

Pointing out that Republicans before the election “solemnly vowed to STOP this lame-duck president,” the letter states: “Now you have the power, right and duty to stop him.

“But it won’t happen with John Boehner leading you. You know this to be true. The trillion-dollar budget deal is just the latest proof that Boehner is not capable of leading the House to victory during this critical period.”

It’s because during the lame-duck Congress, Boehner agreed to Obama’s plan to continue funding for Obamacare and amnesty into 2015.

MSNBC did a report only days ago speculating on whether Hanen would halt the federal plan. MSNBC called Hanen “a critic of the Obama administration’s immigration policies.”

Worried MSNBC, “If Hanen decides against the Obama administration, he could block the implementation of the executive measures, which are scheduled to kick in Feb. 18. If that were to happen, the Department of Justice would almost certainly appeal the decision, which would then go to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals – yet another conservative-leaning court.”

The fact that more than half the states are participating in the case has alarmed amnesty supporters, but they still hope more and more illegals come out of the shadows and claim a place at the head of the line of those awaiting official recognition in the U.S., or at least it appears that way.

Karen Tumlin of the National Immigration Law Center told MSNBC, “People have been waiting so long for a chance to come forward and be able to work with authorization and not be looking over their shoulder all day long. We’re really trying to send the message that this should be business as usual.”

House Republicans, under Boehner, also have said they are going to take court action, but haven’t yet.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/federal-j...gRjykXlhTh6.99

txgirl · 02-17-2015, 01:34 AM

This one has a lot more info.

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/16/8025691...-lawsuit-obama

IamAman · 02-17-2015, 01:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by txgirl

This one has a lot more info.

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/16/8025691...-lawsuit-obama

Well there is one day left...Let's see if there is any fancy legal moves the president can pull.

IamAman · 02-17-2015, 01:51 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/us...-in-texas.html From the NY Times with even more detail and a little more hopeful:

Quote:

A federal judge in Texas has ordered a halt, at least temporarily, to President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, siding with Texas and 25 other states that filed a lawsuit opposing the initiatives.

In an order filed on Monday, the judge, Andrew S. Hanen of Federal District Court in Brownsville, prohibited the Obama administration from carrying out programs the president announced in November that would offer protection from deportation and work permits to as many as five million undocumented immigrants. The first of those programs was scheduled to start receiving applications on Wednesday.

Judge Hanen, an outspoken critic of the administration on immigration policy, found that the states had satisfied the minimum legal requirements to bring their lawsuit. He said the Obama administration had failed to comply with basic administrative procedures for putting such a sweeping program into effect.

The administration argued that Mr. Obama was well within long-established federal authority for a president to decide how to enforce the immigration laws. But Texas and the other states said the executive measures were an egregious case of government by fiat that would impose huge new costs on their budgets.

Mr. Obama said he was using executive powers to focus enforcement agents on deporting serious criminals and those posing threats to national security. Three-year deportation deferrals and work permits were offered for undocumented immigrants who have not committed serious crimes, have been here at least five years and have children who are American citizens or legal residents.

As part of the package, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson also established new priorities, instructing enforcement agents to concentrate on deporting the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists and gang members, as well as migrants caught crossing the border illegally.

Since the lawsuit was filed on Dec. 3, the stark divisions over Mr. Obama’s sweeping actions have played out in filings in the case. Three senators and 65 House members, all Republicans, signed a legal brief opposing the president that was filed by the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative legal action organization.

Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, who is known for crackdowns on people living in the country illegally, also filed a brief supporting the states’ lawsuit. In December, a federal judge in Washington dismissed a separate lawsuit by Sheriff Arpaio seeking to stop the president’s actions.

On the other side, Washington and 11 other states as well as the District of Columbia weighed in supporting Mr. Obama, arguing that they would benefit from the increased wages and taxes that would result if illegal immigrant workers came out of the underground. The mayors of 33 cities, including New York and Los Angeles, and the Conference of Mayors also supported Mr. Obama.

“The strong entrepreneurial spirit of immigrants to the United States has significantly boosted local economies and labor markets,” the mayors wrote in their filing.

Some legal scholars said any order by Judge Hanen to halt the president’s actions would be quickly suspended by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.

“Federal supremacy with respect to immigration matters makes the states a kind of interloper in disputes between the president and Congress,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard. “They don’t have any right of their own.”

The states’ lawsuit quotes Mr. Obama as saying many times in recent years that he did not have authority to take actions as broad as those he ultimately took. Mr. Tribe said that argument was not likely to pass muster with appeals court judges.

“All of that is interesting political rhetoric,” he said, “but it has nothing to do with whether the states have standing and nothing to do with the law.”

Judge Hanen, who was appointed in 2002 by President George W. Bush, has excoriated the Obama administration’s immigration policies in several unusually outspoken rulings. The president's supporters have said that Texas officials, who are leading the states’ lawsuit, were venue shopping when they chose to file in Brownsville.

But at a hearing on Jan. 15, Judge Hanen said Brownsville, which sits on the border with Mexico, was an appropriate venue for the suit because its residents see the impact of immigration every day. “Talking to anyone in Brownsville about immigration is like talking to Noah about the flood,” Judge Hanen said.

In a lengthy and colorful opinion last August, Judge Hanen departed from the issue at hand to accuse the Obama administration of adopting a deportation policy that “endangers America” and was “an open invitation to the most dangerous criminals in society.”

The case involved a Salvadoran immigrant with a long criminal record whom Judge Hanen had earlier sent to prison for five years. Instead of deporting the man after he served his sentence, an immigration judge in Los Angeles ordered him released, a decision Judge Hanen found “incredible.” Citing no specific evidence, he surmised that the administration had adopted a broader policy of releasing such criminals.

While acknowledging that he had no jurisdiction to alter policy, Judge Hanen said he relied on his “firsthand, in-the-trenches knowledge of the border situation” and “at least a measurable level of common sense” to reach his conclusions about the case.

“The court has never been opposed to accommodating those who come to this country yearning to be free, but this current policy only restricts the freedom of those who deserve it most while giving complete freedom to criminals who deserve it least,” he wrote.

The mayor of Brownsville, Tony Martinez, was among those who filed court papers supporting Mr. Obama’s actions. “We see a tremendous value in families staying together and being together,” Mr. Martinez said on a conference call on Tuesday organized by the White House. “Eventually we hope to get all these folks out of the shadows,” he said.

pink · 02-17-2015, 01:51 AM

Just saw this! I'm not surprised smdh*

ggalicia · 02-17-2015, 01:53 AM

But this only affects DAPA?

Malign0n · 02-17-2015, 01:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ggalicia

But this only affects DAPA?

I know what you mean. I read the injunction and it only states DAPA and nothing else...

pink · 02-17-2015, 01:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malign0n

I know what you mean. I read the injunction and it only states DAPA and nothing else...

Thats what I was thinking too, But guess we will have to wait and see if USCIS gives an update so we know where we stand. Ughhhhhhh!!!!

IamAman · 02-17-2015, 02:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pink

Just saw this! I'm not surprised smdh*

It affects all 2014 EO. Lets not panic yet....

Pianoswithoutfaith · 02-17-2015, 02:34 AM

ah fudge

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Federal judge temporarily blocks Obama's executive actions on amnesty for undocumente