After Ruling, Administration Delays Obama Immigration Actions
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, on Feb 11. In a statement, he called on Senate Democrats to end their filibuster of Department of Homeland Security funding. Credit Jabin Botsford/The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and ASHLEY PARKER FEB. 17, 2015
WASHINGTON — Just one day before undocumented immigrants were set to begin applying for work permits and legal protections, the Obama administration announced on Tuesday that it would delay carrying out President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, saying a federal judge’s last-minute ruling had tied the White House’s hands.
Jeh C. Johnson, the Homeland Security secretary, vowed to appeal the court ruling, which said that the president had not followed proper legal procedures in instituting his program. But Mr. Johnson said the department would comply with it by suspending plans to begin accepting applications from an expanded group of illegal immigrants on Wednesday.
“The Department of Justice, legal scholars, immigration experts and even other courts have said that our actions are well within our legal authority,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement. “Our actions will also benefit the economy and promote law enforcement. We fully expect to ultimately prevail in the courts.”
Mr. Johnson said the department would be “fully prepared” to carry out the president’s orders when that happens. The executive orders would extend temporary work permits to as many as five million people and protect them from the threat of deportation.
Judge Andrew S. Hanen of Federal District Court in Brownsville, Texas, ordered a halt to those executive actions late Monday, ruling that a coalition of 26 states had standing to challenge them. In his statement, Mr. Johnson said he strongly disagreed with the judge’s decision to issue a temporary injunction against the programs.
”The Department of Justice will appeal that temporary injunction; in the meantime, we recognize we must comply with it,” Mr. Johnson said.
Republican lawmakers could argue that the federal courts will end up doing what the party is trying to do with its showdown over Homeland Security funding, potentially freeing Congress to fund the department without restrictions. But in a series of coordinated statements on Tuesday, Republican leaders in Congress and officials at conservative organizations showed no sign of relenting.
”This ruling underscores what the president has already acknowledged publicly 22 times: He doesn’t have the authority to take the kinds of actions he once referred to as ‘ignoring the law’ and ‘unwise and unfair,’” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said in a statement. “Senate Democrats — especially those who’ve voiced opposition to the president’s executive overreach — should end their partisan filibuster of Department of Homeland Security funding.”
Jenny Beth Martin, a founder of the Tea Party Patriots, said in a similar statement that the ruling “points out the lawless, overreaching nature of President Obama’s actions.”
“We’re hopeful this will be a wake-up call to Senate Democrats,” she added, “and that they will allow a vote on funding for critical D.H.S. funding as soon as they return from the recess.”
Senate Democrats have used a procedural maneuver three times to prevent their Republican colleagues from taking up the spending bill that the House sent last month. The House legislation would fund the Department of Homeland Security, but it would also undo legal protections for as many as five million undocumented immigrants, including children — something Democrats, and some Republicans, say is unacceptable.
Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the Senate’s No. 3 Democrat, said court action should free Republicans of their political obligation to fight over Homeland Security funding.
“It’s perfectly appropriate to take this issue to court, but it is completely unacceptable for Republicans to hold up funding for the Department of Homeland Security while the case wends its way through the legal system,” he said after the judge’s ruling.
But even as Republicans issued statements vowing to continue the fight, lawmakers and aides scrambled to game out the longer-term implications of the court ruling for the political fight to fund the Homeland Security agency, which will run out of money on Feb. 27.
Shortly after taking over as majority leader, Mr. McConnell promised that there would be no government shutdowns. Some political operatives on Tuesday speculated that the judge’s ruling could provide a way out of the legislative stalemate over Homeland Security funding by allowing Republicans to argue that the fight is best left to the courts.
At the same time, the ruling could also embolden the most hard-line Republicans, giving them the confidence to double down on their legislative strategy, now that they believe the courts are also on their side.
In the meantime, Senate Democrats remained united on Tuesday, with leadership aides signaling that the conference will still oppose any Homeland Security funding measure that would block the president’s immigration programs and will insist on a “clean” funding bill without such language.
Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, has expressed misgivings about the president’s executive actions. But Jonathan Kott, a spokesman for Mr. Manchin, said the senator “still believes that we should pass a clean D.H.S. funding bill.”
On “Fox News Sunday,” the House speaker, John A. Boehner, signaled that he was willing to let funding for the agency lapse — allowing for a shutdown — if the Senate was unable to pass the House’s bill.
Obama Immigration Policy Halted by Federal Judge in Texas
A federal judge in Texas has ordered a halt, at least temporarily, to President Obama’s executive actions on immigration. Credit Jabin Botsford/The New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON FEB. 17, 2015
A federal judge in Texas has ordered a halt, at least temporarily, to President Obama’s executive actions on immigration [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/us/obama-immigration-speech.html ], 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 for the Southern District of Texas, in Brownsville, prohibited the Obama administration from carrying out programs the president announced on Nov. 20 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. The immediate impact of the ruling is that up to 270,000 undocumented immigrants nationwide who came to the United States as children will not be able to apply for deportation protection under an expansion of an existing executive program. A larger new program is scheduled to begin in May.
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 said it would swiftly appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. Some legal scholars said that court was likely to stop the ruling from taking effect while it considers the case.
“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 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.
The White House responded to the judge’s ruling in a statement early Tuesday, saying the president had acted within the law and with decades of legal precedent behind him.
“The Department of Justice, legal scholars, immigration experts and the district court in Washington, D.C., have determined that the president’s actions are well within his legal authority,” the White House statement said. “The district court’s decision wrongly prevents these lawful, common sense policies from taking effect.”
In ordering the administration to suspend the programs while he makes a final decision on the case, Judge Hanen agreed with the states that the president’s policies had already been costly.
“The court finds that the government’s failure to secure the border has exacerbated illegal immigration into this country,” Judge Hanen wrote. “Further, the record supports the finding that this lack of enforcement, combined with the country’s high rate of illegal immigration, significantly drains the states’ resources.”
Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, which is leading the states bringing the lawsuit, hailed the judge’s ruling as a “victory for the rule of law in America and a crucial first step in reining in President Obama’s lawlessness.” He said Mr. Obama’s actions were “an affront to everyone pursuing a life of freedom and opportunity in America the right way.”
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.
In his opinion, Judge Hanen accused administration officials of being “disingenuous” when they said the president’s initiatives did not significantly alter existing policies. He wrote that the programs were “a massive change in immigration practice” that would affect “the nation’s entire immigration scheme and the states who must bear the lion’s share of its consequences.” He said the executive actions had violated laws that the federal government must follow to issue new rules, and he determined “the states have clearly proven a likelihood of success on the merits.”
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 [ http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2014/12/23/us/politics/ap-us-immigration-arizona-sheriff.html ] 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 local labor markets,” the mayors wrote in their filing.
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, the Harvard law professor, said that argument was not likely to pass muster on appeal.
“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 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 long 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 previously sent to prison for five years. Instead of deporting the man after he served his sentence, an immigration judge in Los Angeles had ordered him released, a decision Judge Hanen said he 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.”
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