New York Times
By Julia Preston and Michael Shear
November 9, 2015
A
federal appeals court said Monday that President Obama could not move
forward with his plans to overhaul immigration rules by providing up to
five million people with
work permits and protection from deportation.
A
three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth
Circuit, in New Orleans, ruled 2 to 1 against an appeal by the Obama
administration, saying a lawsuit
brought by 26 states to block Mr. Obama’s actions was likely to succeed
at trial.
The
ruling is the latest blow to the president’s efforts to circumvent
congressional inaction on immigration by using the power of his office
to reshape the way immigration
laws are enforced.
But
the ruling may have come just soon enough to allow Mr. Obama’s lawyers
to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court for consideration next year.
Administration officials
are hoping that the Supreme Court will overturn the lower-court rulings
and let the president carry out his immigration program.
Patrick
Rodenbush, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the
administration would seek to resolve the litigation quickly so
immigration authorities could prioritize
“the removal of the worst offenders, not people who have long ties to
the United States and who are raising American children.”
Lawyers
for the administration had been expecting the Fifth Circuit ruling to
go against the president, partly because of the high number of judges in
that circuit appointed
by Republican presidents.
Mr.
Obama announced last November that he would use his executive authority
to effectively stop deporting the undocumented parents of American
children. That program —
known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans — would also allow
the parents to work legally in the United States.
Before
the effort began, it was blocked in February by a Federal District
Court judge in Texas, who ruled that allowing millions of illegal
immigrants to remain lawfully
in the United States would prove costly to the State of Texas, the lead
plaintiff in the case. The judge also said the government had not
followed the proper procedures for enacting the new immigration rules.
Writing
for the two judges in the majority, Judge Jerry E. Smith found that
Texas had established that it was in a strong legal position to bring
the lawsuit because it
would be harmed by new costs for issuing driver’s licenses to
immigrants. He also found that the program would undercut the will of
Congress.
“Congress
did not intend to make immune from judicial review an agency action
that reclassifies millions of illegal aliens in a way that imposes
substantial costs on states,”
Judge Smith wrote. He rejected the administration’s argument that the
program was just an expansion of an immigration enforcement policy
intended to make efficient use of limited resources.
Ken
Paxton, the Texas attorney general, hailed the ruling in a statement.
“Today, the Fifth Circuit asserted that the separation of powers remains
the law of the land,
and the president must follow the rule of law, just like everybody
else,” he said. “Texas, leading a charge of 26 states, has secured an
important victory to put a halt to the president’s lawlessness.”
In
the last several weeks, administration officials and other supporters
of the immigration actions had expressed frustration that the appeals
court had taken so long
to rule. If the Fifth Circuit court had waited too long to allow an
appeal to the Supreme Court, Mr. Obama’s hopes of carrying out his
program before he leaves office in 2017 would have all but ended. As it
stands, if the Supreme Court overturns the lower-court
rulings, the administration would have only a few months to begin
signing people up.
Marielena
Hincapié, the executive director of the National Immigration Law
Center, said that while the appeals court ruling might be seen as
another defeat for her cause,
“the silver lining is that this is just in the nick of time for the
administration to go to the Supreme Court.”
Mr.
Obama has asserted that the immigration program would merely direct
federal agents not to enforce deportation laws against a certain group
of people. But the appeals
court suggested that the president had exceeded his authority by using
the program to grant benefits without a congressional mandate.
In
a blunt dissent, Judge Carolyn King said the two other judges, as well
as Judge Andrew S. Hanen, the District Court judge, had misstated the
basic facts of the case.
She accused her colleagues of basing their decisions on “conjecture,
intuition or preconception.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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