President Barack Obama’s landmark immigration overhaul through executive action as opposed to the legislative route may face a protracted legal battle after a Texas federal judge temporarily blocked the Obama initiative on Tuesday. “I disagree with the Texas judge’s ruling, and the Justice Department will appeal,” Obama said after US District Judge Andrew S Hanen ruled that the programme to benefit an estimated 5 million illegal immigrants should wait until a lawsuit filed by 26 States challenging the Obama order is decided.
Although the injunction was seen as a major setback for the President, Obama exuded confidence that he would win the legal battle over immigration, asserting: “The law is on our side.” “President Obama abdicated his responsibility to uphold the United States Constitution when he attempted to circumvent the laws passed by Congress via executive fiat,” said Texas’s Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who had filed the lawsuit on behalf of 26 States. “Judge Hanen’s decision rightly stops the president’s overreach in its tracks,” he added. An immediate upshot of the judge’s ruling is that the plan to benefit illegal immigrants has been put on hold for now.
Wednesday was to mark the start of accepting applications under the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and lawful Permanent Residents. In the wake of the ruling halting the process, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the US Citizenship and Immigration Services will comply with the ruling, even as the Department of Justice goes in appeal.
“This is not the first time where a lower court judge blocked something or attempted to block something that ultimately was shown to be lawful,” Obama said, adding: “I’m confident that it is well within my authority and position of the executive branch’s prosecutorial discretion to execute this law.”
Without going into the constitutionality of the Obama order, issued last November but set for implementation with effect from Wednesday, the judge agreed the States that there was sufficient merit to suspend the programme till the legal challenge is disposed of. The judge’s ruling accentuates what has been a Democratic-Republican battle on immigration reform, which has been remained stalled in Congress for a long time, prompting Obama to resort to executive action.
“We live in a nation governed by a system of checks and balances, and the President’s attempt to by-pass the will of the American people was successfully checked today,” Governor Abbott said. Soon after the ruling, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest asserted a statement: “The Supreme Court and Congress have made clear that the federal government can set priorities in enforcing our immigration laws—which is exactly what the president did when he announced commonsense policies to help fix our broken immigration system.”
“Those policies are consistent with the laws passed by Congress and decisions of the Supreme Court, as well as five decades of precedent by presidents of both parties who have used their authority to set priorities in enforcing our immigration laws,” Earnest said, adding top legal luminaries have determined that the President’s actions are well within his legal authority.