Judge asks Obama To Explain Immigration Protections

A federal judge in Texas wants the Obama administration to explain why 100,000 young people have been granted temporary relief from deportation, even though the government said it wasn’t taking applications for such protections.

U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen, who has frozen President Obama’s immigration program while a lawsuit over it proceeds, said in a ruling late Monday that he wouldn’t address the government’s attempts to restart the program until Justice Department lawyers explained the move.

Last year, Obama announced that he was using his executive power to grant three-year work permits and temporary protection from deportation to around 4-million adults who are parents of U.S. citizens and have lived in the U.S. for at least five years. He also said he would issue the same protections to an expanded group of immigrants who came here as young people in an expansion of 2012’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Texas and two dozen other states sued to block Obama’s plan.

During hearings in recent months, the government said it would not begin taking applications for the new immigration program until February. But last week, Justice Department lawyers revealed that, as soon as Obama made his announcement last fall, the administration had begun granting three-year permits to people who already had their DACA applications in the pipeline – and the lawyers said the government would not revoke the requests.

Lawyers for Texas and the other states say the actions are “difficult to square” with the earlier statements that nothing would happen until February, and Hanen seems to agree, saying that the government should be “prepared to fully explain” what happened.

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