Federal Judge Issues Temporary Injunction Halting President Obama’s Unilateral Actions on Immigration

Quote of the Day:

For today, at least, we return to being a nation of laws.

 —Keith Koffler at White House Dossier

I can’t think of a better way to sum up a federal judge’s injunction temporarily halting President Obama’s unilateral moves on immigration.

Before somebody on the left starts hollering about judicial activism, let me say that this is what a judge is supposed to do: make sure that actions are consonant with the Constitution.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen has at the request of twenty-six states granted a temporary injunction to implementation of President Obama’s pen and pencil abrogation of U.S. immigration law.  Fox reports:

[Judge Hanen] wrote in a memorandum accompanying his order that the lawsuit should go forward and that without a preliminary injunction the states will "suffer irreparable harm in this case."

"The genie would be impossible to put back into the bottle," he wrote, adding that he agreed with the plaintiffs' argument that legalizing the presence of millions of people is a "virtually irreversible" action.

…

In their request for the injunction, the coalition [of twenty-six states] said it was necessary because it would be "difficult or impossible to undo the President's lawlessness after the Defendants start granting applications for deferred action."

I suspect that is what the Obama administration was counting on—the genie would be out of the bottle and it would be impossible to reassert U.S. immigration law. President Obama would unilaterally have changed the law, in effect, without every going to Congress.

President Obama had issued orders to expand a program to halt deportation of young people who were brought to the U.S. illegally and to extend deportation protections on people who have been here some time.This delays the implementaiton of these presidential actions–assuming the White House deigns to comply. It is possible to sympathize with the young people (and indeed the older ones) without further believing we suddenly live in a monarchy where President Obama gets unilaterally take actions that were not permitted in the republic founded upon the Constitution.

Koffler observes:

This is pretty significant. Do I know that because I an immigration lawyer? No. But I can tell because the White House released a statement at 2:30 in the morning vowing to appeal the decision.