A FEDERAL judge on Thursday, March 19, threatened to sanction the Justice Department if it is found that government lawyers misled him about the implementation of President Barack Obama’s executive order on immigration.
US District Judge Andrew Hanen, ruled on Feb. 16 in favor of 26 states to indefinitely postpone Obama’s executive action, which would shield up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation. Hanen challenged the government to respond to state claims that it ignored his orders and explain how more than 100,000 undocumented immigrants received extended work permits before the program was scheduled to begin.
Hanen also asked why he should not grant a discovery request for internal federal immigration documents, a request filed Thursday by the states suing because of Obama’s executive action.
Justice Department attorney Kathleen Hartnett told Hanen she neglected to mention that these immigrants, who had requested two-year work permits and deportation waivers under the 2012 version of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, automatically received three-year permits by officials who applied the new policy prematurely, according to Bloomberg.
“Like the judge, the states thought nothing was happening,” Hanen said, according to Los Angeles Times. “Like an idiot, I believed that.”
Immediately after the Justice Department read Hanen’s order, which “clearly” blocked “any and all changes” to both versions of the initiative, officials ceased issuing the three-year permits, Hartnett said, according to Bloomberg.
The Obama administration on Saturday, March 21, asked Hanen not to penalize it for failing to inform him about the program’s partial implementation, despite his order that temporarily blocks it.
Hanen said if he decides to impose sanctions, “the taxpayers of the [26] states would end up paying their own damages,” but he was considering, at a minimum, having the federal government absorb the states’ legal fees.
States that sued claim Obama’s order illegally alters immigration law while bypassing Congressional approval and rewards those residing in the United States illegally. The White House, however, said the program is a way to use its limited border-security resources more efficiently by focusing on deporting criminals and recent boarder crossers.
California Gov. Jerry Brown, on March 13, expressed support for the president’s action.
“The president is well within his authority. I’ve been an attorney general, and I know the law. President Obama has acted legally … and wisely,” he said.
Republicans, who oppose the order, had made repeated efforts to prevent the implementation of Obama’s order by including it as a provision in multiple versions of the Homeland Security spending bill, as the department deals with immigration. Now, the GOP is looking to prevent immigrants who would be protected under the executive order from becoming retroactively eligible to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit.
This legislation would allow the government to save $2.1 billion, according to the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation.
The lead author of the bill in the Senate, however, said this measure “is not meant to be part of the immigration debate.”
“It’s just part of correcting what the president has put in place when he legalized people through his November action,” said Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), according to USA Today.
Fifteen individuals who were allowed to stay in the United States under Obama’s executive action were arrested on March 13 by federal agents in a sweep targeting the most dangerous criminal immigrants, Associated Press learned. Fourteen of the 15 had been convicted of a crime, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
“With few fraud detection measures and effective background checks in place, it’s no surprise that [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] arrested over a dozen DACA recipients [on March 13], most of whom had already been convicted of a crime,” said Bob Goodlatte, House judiciary committee chairman. “I and other members of the House judiciary committee have expressed concern about this for years.”
The White House has requested that Hanen reverse the delay of the program while the lawsuit is in progress, and has petitioned to the US Court of Appeals in New Orleans to overturn his order, Bloomberg reported.
(With reports from Associated Press, Bloomberg, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian and USA Today)
(www.asianjournal.com)
(LA Midweek March 25-27, 2015 Sec. A pg.1)
