Texas’ Republican leaders are confident they will win an overall lawsuit challenging President Obama’s executive order on immigration. The presidential order shields about 4 million people, in the country illegally, from deportation.
Brownsville Federal District Judge Andrew Hanen ruled this week that without a temporary injunction, “the genie would be impossible to put back in the bottle.” He stated that the president had overstepped his authority, and violated the U.S. Administrative Procedures Act.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he believed the State of Texas would win this case all the way through the appellate process. “The president, as the chief executive, does not have the authority to fabricate new, or, create out of whole cloth, new law. As the judge said, it is only Congress that has the authority, under the United States Constitution, to create new laws concerning immigration,” Abbott reaffirmed.
Abbott was joined by US Senator Ted Cruz, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton when the group announced their plans. Speaker Joe Straus speaking to a reporter with the Texas Tribune said he was not made aware of the event.
Abbott, who initiated the lawsuit as attorney general, and was joined by a number of other states, has handed the case over to his successor Ken Paxton, who plans to pursue it with as much vigilance.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas discussed the recent ruling and the impact, he says, that the executive action has had on Congress. “Right now Senate Democrats are filibustering in order to kill funding for the Department of Homeland Security, in order to hold DHS hostage and force the president’s executive amnesty program on the American people. That amnesty program has now been declared illegal and so Senate Democrats should look very closely at this opinion and decide if they are willing to jeopardize national security,” said Cruz.
The Obama Administration has indicated it will appeal the district court’s decision. Wednesday would have been the first day immigrants could sign up under the administration’s expanded version of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. But DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would not accept applications for the expanded DACA program, and added that a program that offered protection to the parents of U.S. citizens and legal residents would also be on hold.
