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发帖数: 1178 | 1 The primary reason that Judge Hanen halted the executive actions was that
he found that the administration hadn't properly followed the Administrative
Procedures Act — which sets the typical procedure for making federal
regulations. According to Cecilia Wang, Director of the Immigrant Rights
Project for the ACLU, Hanen's ruling says that "if (the government) wanted
to do these things, it should have provided notice in the Federal Register,
with period for comment." But because the Obama administration didn't do
that for these actions, the ruling says, it violated the law. (The other
half of Judge Hanen's ruling, saying that the states were allowed to sue the
federal government to begin with, was also really narrow.)
This doesn't mean that Judge Hanen believes that the deferred action
programs are kosher. His ruling makes it clear that he thinks the federal
government has abdicated its responsibility to enforce immigration law. And
Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law who filed a
brief on behalf of the states in this case, points out that Judge Hanen's
arguments that the government violated the Administrative Procedures Act
could also be used to argue that the government violated the "take care
clause" of the Constitution — so he might be laying the groundwork for a
future ruling that the programs are unconstitutional.
After all, Judge Hanen has been a vocal critic of President Obama's
immigration policy. But while the rhetoric of this opinion is often fiery,
the actual legal scope of the ruling — the part that matters going forward
— is much more limited.
That's because this is the very beginning of a very, very long court battle,
and everyone involved in the case understands that. From now on, the ruling
stopping the deferred action programs will move up through the courts while
Judge Hanen continues to consider the underlying questions. The states that
sued the president are celebrating a temporary victory, and some
Republicans in Congress are trying to use this as a reason Democrats should
cave on funding the Department of Homeland Security. (Democrats aren't
caving.) Meanwhile, immigration advocates are stressing that this is a "bump
in the road" — as a way to prevent immigrants from getting spooked out of
applying for deferred action in the future. As long as the president's
executive actions remain in legal limbo, even on the narrowest of technical
grounds, the threat to the long-term success of the programs is real. |
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