Immigration News & Updates
eNewsletter
eNewsletter
Learn More About:
Court Temporarily Blocks the President’s
Executive Actions on Immigration !
Earlier this week on Monday, a federal judge in Texas issued a temporarily “injunction” blocking President Obama’s Executive Actions on Immigration from being implemented. As a result, the new expanded “Deferred Action” program for Dreamers, called DACA and for Parents of U.S. Citizens and U.S. Residents, called DAPA, will be temporarily halted, pending an Appeal by the Obama Administration to a higher Federal Court to request that the injunction be lifted to allow the programs to go forward.
Under the President’s Executive Actions, as many as 4 million Immigrants would receive work authorization and “Deferred Action” status, protecting them from being deported.
The judge’s ruling came after a coalition of 26 states including Florida, joined a lawsuit filed in the state of Texas late last year seeking to stop implementation of the planned Executive Actions, claiming that the President’s orders exceeded his executive authority and violated the Constitution. The lawsuit claims, among other things, that the Obama Administration’s 2012 “Deferred Action” under the Childhood Arrivals program was to blame for last summer’s border crisis, when thousands of young Immigrant children flooded across the southwestern U.S. border and that implementation of the planned Executive Actions would result in even more harm to the states.
In his opinion issuing the injunction, judge Hanen, a George W. Bush appointee wrote: “The court finds that the government’s failure to secure the border has exacerbated illegal immigration into this country,”. If the executive actions providing legal status to millions of people were to take effect, Hanen wrote, "The genie would be impossible to put back into the bottle."
While many legal experts predict that the lawsuit led by Republican states has little chance of success, the ruling does represent a setback for the Obama Administration, coming just one day before the new Executive Action DACA program was slated to begin. The White House released a statement on Tuesday defending the President’s legal authority to issue the Executive Actions last November, stating that “The Supreme Court and Congress have made it clear that the federal government can set priorities in enforcing our immigrations laws—which is exactly what the President did,” the statement reads. “The district court’s decision wrongly prevents these lawful, commonsense policies from taking effect.”
The Judge’s temporary order gives the states the opportunity to pursue their lawsuit, which if successful, would permanently halt the President’s executive actions. A deadline of February 27th was set to allow the states to form legal arguments against the government program and to submit a schedule for resolution of the issues.
The Department of Justice is expected to seek an emergency stay of the ruling while it pursues an appeal at the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Stay tuned…
Read more about the Exeutive Action Injunction:
You can find out more about documents and information you will need to qualify for the
Executive Action DAPA or new DACA programs by calling our office at: 954-382-5378.
