New York Times
By Michael Shear
February 20, 2015
The
White House on Friday said it would seek an emergency ruling to allow
President Obama’s executive actions on immigration to go into effect,
underscoring its urgent
desire to resolve a legal challenge to the programs and reassure
anxious supporters in the immigrant community.
The
move came in response to a ruling issued by a federal judge on Monday
that stopped the government from issuing work permits and providing
legal protections to hundreds
of thousands of undocumented immigrants.
Legal
experts said the government may not be successful in its immediate
effort to block the judge’s ruling. But by submitting an emergency
request, the government lawyers
are signaling to the court that they intend to be aggressive in
pursuing a quick decision on the merits of the case.
The
government is also sending a message to immigration advocates, many of
whom have been frustrated by the Justice Department’s delay in filing a
formal appeal to the
ruling by Judge Andrew S. Hanen of Federal District Court in
Brownsville, Tex.
Ken
Paxton, the attorney general in Texas, which is leading the legal fight
against Mr. Obama’s executive actions, said in a statement Friday that
he and the other states
in the lawsuit would continue to fight to stop the president.
“A
federal judge properly enjoined President Obama’s lawless executive
amnesty,” Mr. Paxton said. “We are a nation of laws, and I will
vigorously defend the United States
Constitution, as Texas and our fellow states continue to fight back
against the aggressive overreach of this lawless administration.”
The
president in November announced executive actions that would shield up
to five million undocumented immigrants from deportation and would
establish programs that provide
work permits to many of those people. The Department of Homeland
Security had been scheduled to begin carrying out part of that program
on Wednesday.
Judge
Hanen said in his ruling, in a case brought by Texas and 25 other
states, that the administration had not followed required procedures for
changing federal rules.
The judge issued an injunction ordering that the program be halted, and
government officials quickly postponed the actions to comply with the
order.
But
while White House officials quickly vowed to appeal the case, the
government’s lawyers did not immediately file the emergency request with
the court or submit the
formal appeal documents.
Some
officials said they were concerned that the administration was unlikely
to win an emergency ruling from the generally conservative judges who
sit on the United States
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans. The standard is
high for an appeals court to put an emergency hold on a district court
decision.
The
White House said on Friday that the emergency request will be made to
Judge Hanen to reverse his order. If he rejects the request, the
government could ask the appeals
court for an emergency stay.
The
delay in announcing an emergency request led to a barrage of criticism
from immigration advocates, who said they worried that Mr. Obama would
be seen as vacillating
in his legal strategy. They urged the White House to make the request
for a stay of the judge’s ruling.
“We
told them the stay is so critical at this juncture,” said Marielena
Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, a
legal defense organization
that had pushed Mr. Obama last year to take sweeping action. “It sends a
strong message that the administration is using every legal tool
available in defending these policies.”
Lupe
Lopez, the interim campaign director for the Alliance for Citizenship,
said that the White House announcement “demonstrates the solid
commitment by Mr. Obama to immigrant
families across the country that he will use every tool at his
disposal.”
Since
the president’s announcement in November, the White House has been
working behind the scenes with advocacy groups to try to maximize
applications to the immigration
programs when the time comes.
In
an interview Friday morning with José Díaz-Balart on MSNBC, Astrid
Silva, a young immigrant who had appeared with Mr. Obama in Las Vegas
the day after he announced
the immigration actions, called on him to seek the stay.
“It’s
very scary,” she said about the delay in the protection programs. “Now
our community doesn’t know the date, doesn’t know if this is going
happen.”
Several
Justice Department lawyers argued that there was a strong legal logic
in favor of trying for an emergency stay. If the administration did not
seek urgent action
by the appeals court, it could make it harder to persuade Judge Hanen
to move quickly to a decision on the merits of the case.
Officials
said the Justice Department would make an official request by the end
of the day on Monday. White House officials said they remained confident
that the administration
would prevail once the full case reached the court of appeals.
“We
believe that when you evaluate the legal merits of the argument, that
there is a solid legal foundation for the president to take the steps
that he announced late
last year to reform our broken immigration system,” Josh Earnest, the
White House press secretary, said on Friday.
Mr.
Earnest added: “That’s consistent with the way that previous presidents
over the course of several decades have used their executive authority.
And that is why, you
know, we are going to continue to pursue this case in the legal
system.”
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