Obama Immigration Policy Critic to Decide States Lawsuit
U.S. President Barack Obama drew the short straw in a lawsuit by 25 states seeking to block efforts to loosen immigration restrictions: The judge who will decide the case has previously assailed him in that arena for turning a blind eye to criminal conduct.
Justice Department lawyers today urged the court to preserve Obamas executive order allowing 4 million undocumented immigrants to stay in the U.S. They filed their request with U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen of Brownsville, Texas, asking him to refuse the call by half of the U.S. states to delay implementation of the program until their court challenge is decided.
Hanen may prove a tough sell. The judge, whose courthouse is located on the Mexican border in Brownsville, accused the the Department of Homeland Security last year of complicity in cross-border child smuggling.
The Swerving Path to Citizenship
The DHS should enforce the laws of the United States -not break them, Hanen said in a written opinion.
Hanen, who was appointed by Republican George W. Bush in 2002, rebuked the agency for completing the criminal conspiracy by delivering undocumented children caught at the border to their parents living illegally in the U.S. The judge complained in a December 2013 opinion that the undocumented parents werent arrested or deported after being reunited with their kids, and taxpayers were footing the transit bills.
The biggest beneficiaries of the conspiracy, Hanen said, are the Mexican drug cartels that control the border smuggling rings, whove learned to rely on the U.S. government to finish the job of the human traffickers if they get caught.
Instead of enforcing the law of the United States, the government took direct steps to help the individuals who violated it, Hanen wrote in his opinion that followed a string of child-trafficking convictions in his court. A private citizen would, and should, be prosecuted for this conduct.
The Obama administration urged Hanen today to deny the states attempt to prevent the new immigration policy from taking effect, arguing that the federal government has broad discretionary authority under the U.S. Constitution to prioritize enforcement resources however the president sees fit.
At its core, plaintiffs suit is a generalized disagreement about the scope of the prosecutorial discretion of the executive branch of the federal government, in the exercise of exclusive federal authority over immigration, government lawyers said in a filing today in the Brownsville court.
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Obama Immigration Policy Critic to Decide States Lawsuit