Los Angeles Times
By Joseph Tanfani
March 10, 2015
After
President Obama in November announced plans to shelter millions of
people from the threat of deportation, immigration officials wasted no
time in carrying them out.
Thousands
of young people who had applied for two-year reprieves from deportation
instead were given three years free from the threat of being kicked out
of the country.
About 100,000 applications were approved before last month, when U.S.
District Judge Andrew S. Hanen in Texas ordered a freeze on Obama’s
executive actions on immigration.
Now,
the administration’s disclosure that it approved those applications has
added yet another complication, and potentially weeks of more delays,
to its attempts to restart
the ambitious immigration initiatives. Hanen said in a filing this week
that he wanted Justice Department lawyers to “fully explain” why they
didn’t mention the three-year permits before last week.
He
set a hearing for March 19. In the meantime, plans for the immigration
program remain on hold because of Hanen’s order in a lawsuit filed by
Texas and two dozen other
states accusing the president of overstepping his authority to create
what amounts to a new law without congressional approval. Hanen stopped
the program while the lawsuit plays out.
“It’s
vital that we get to the bottom of the recent actions by the Obama
administration, and this hearing will be key in obtaining the truth
about what appears on its
face to be the administration’s clear misrepresentation of the facts in
this case,” said Cynthia Meyer, deputy press secretary for the Texas
attorney general’s office.
Obama
announced last fall that he was using his executive power to grant
three-year work permits and temporary protection from deportation to
about 4 million adults who
are parents of U.S. citizens and have lived in the country for at least
five years. He said the program was simply an extension of his
authority to prioritize immigration enforcement; the administration says
there is no practical way to deport all 11 million
people living here illegally.
Obama
also said at the time that he would issue the same protections to a
group of immigrants who came here as young people, an expansion of
2012’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. About 300,000 more people would be eligible
under the expanded eligibility rules; the Homeland Security Department
later announced it would begin accepting applications from those people
starting Feb. 18.
However, the memo also said the change from two years of protection to three years would take effect immediately.
One
of the people who received the three-year reprieve was Anel Rojas, 23,
of Hayward, Calif. A community college student and volunteer at an
immigration legal clinic,
she applied for a DACA renewal in November and won approval in January.
“It
plays a really big part in what I believe is my future,” said Rojas,
who came to the U.S. from Mexico at age 8. “I did have the motivation to
be able to pursue something,
but before DACA I saw a lot of barriers that I had to overcome.” She
says she needs to work to pay her school costs, but it was hard to get a
job until she could get a Social Security number.
The
current wrangling is over what Justice Department lawyers told the
judge during recent hearings as scheduling matters were discussed. In
January, lawyers said nothing
would be happening before Feb. 18.
Last
week, government lawyers, “in an abundance of caution,” disclosed to
Hanen that they had been granting the three-year permits since November
to DACA applicants who
qualified under the 2012 rules. The talk of the Feb. 18 date “may have
led to confusion,” said the brief signed by six Justice Department
lawyers.
Lawyers
for Texas and the other states said the actions were “difficult to
square” with the lawyers’ earlier statements in the case.
For
the administration, the bottom line of the dispute may mean more
problems in moving the case through the courts — and more trouble in
getting the immigration program
in place before Obama leaves office. The administration has asked Hanen
to quickly decide on its request that he stay his order and allow the
program to move forward.
Hanen
has made clear his hostility to the executive actions, and the
administration is anxious to move on and make its case at the U.S. 5th
Circuit Court of Appeals in
New Orleans. But the matter may remain in Hanen’s court; the states
have asked permission to dig further into the administration’s moves.
On Tuesday, a Justice Department spokesman said attorneys were still considering what to do next.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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