Monday, a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas enjoined in full President Obama’s unilateral November 2014 immigration action. Texas led a 26-state coalition fighting the President’s attempt to unilaterally grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.
Excerpts from the ruling are below:
“What is perhaps most perplexing about the Defendants’ claim that DAPA is merely ‘guidance’ is the President’s own labeling of the program. In formally announcing DAPA to the nation for the first time, President Obama stated, ‘I just took an action to change the law.’”
“The DAPA program clearly represents a substantive change in immigration policy. It is a program instituted to give a certain, newly-adopted class of 4.3 million illegal immigrants not only ‘legal presence’ in the United States, but also the right to work legally and the right to receive a myriad of governmental benefits to which they would not otherwise be entitled. It does more than ‘supplement’ the statute’; if anything, it contradicts the INA. It is, in effect, a new law.”
“[T]he States assert that the Government has abandoned its duty to enforce the law. This assertion cannot be disputed.”
“Non-enforcement does not entail refusing to remove these individuals as required by the law and then providing three years of immunity from that law, legal presence status, plus any benefits that may accompany legal presence under current regulations.”
“DAPA does not represent mere inadequacy; it is complete abdication. The DHS does have discretion in the manner in which it chooses to fulfill the expressed will of Congress. It cannot, however, enact a program whereby it not only ignores the dictates of Congress, but actively acts to thwart them.”
“The DHS Secretary is not just rewriting the laws; he is creating them from scratch.”
“The Court finds Defendants’ labeling [of the action as a guidance policy] disingenuous and, as discussed below, contrary to the substance of DAPA.”
“[T]here are millions of dollars at stake in the form of unrecoverable costs to the States if DAPA is implemented and later found unlawful in terms of infrastructure and personnel to handle the influx of applications.”
“This genie would be impossible to put back into the bottle.”
“This Court finds that, directly interested or not, the public interest factor that weighs the heaviest is ensuring that actions of the Executive Branch (and within it, the DHS – one of the nation’s most important law enforcement agencies) comply with this country’s laws and its Constitution.”