Texas Immigration Ruling: George W. Bush Continues to Haunt Us

Racist judge?

A Texas federal judge appointed by idiot-in-chief George W. Bush has at least temporarily delayed a White House executive order that would have suspended deportations of certain classes of undocumented immigrants.  In doing so, he ignored the long established legal standard that the FEDERAL government, not the states, set national immigration policy.  Meanwhile, the racists and anti-Hispanic forces in the Neanderthal GOP base - many of whom disingenuously claim to uphold "Christian" values - are having near orgasms of joy.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at the legally incorrect ruling of a judge who should never have been confirmed.  Here are excerpts:

President Obama surely knew that his recent executive actions to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation would run into trouble as soon as a 26-state lawsuit opposing the actions landed on the desk of Federal District Judge Andrew Hanen, of Brownsville, Tex.

Judge Hanen — who last month invoked a biblical flood in describing illegal immigration into that community — has spoken out aggressively against Mr. Obama’s immigration policy in the past, saying it “endangers America” and is “an open invitation to the most dangerous criminals in society.” Indeed, his earlier opinions were the reason Republican governors and attorneys general pushed to get their suit into his district.

As expected, the judge on Monday night temporarily blocked the first of several programs Mr. Obama announced in November to offer work permits and a three-year reprieve from deportation to more than four million immigrants who are parents of American citizens and who have no criminal record.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas was so excited at Monday’s decision that he jumped on Twitter to say Mr. Obama’s amnesty order “has been ruled unconstitutional.”  No, it hasn’t.

What Judge Hanen did was to issue a preliminary injunction that prevents the executive action from going into effect until he can rule on the merits of the lawsuit itself, or until a higher court reverses him.

What he did not do was dispute the president’s broad authority to decide whom to deport, which is exactly what the Obama administration did in prioritizing the removal of immigrants who pose a threat to public safety or national security. Yet the judge blocked the action, which he called “a massive change in immigration practice.”

He danced around the fundamental point — as the Supreme Court reiterated as recently as 2012 — that setting immigration policy is the prerogative of the federal government, not the states. The judge also ruled that the states are likely to succeed on at least one of their underlying claims, which is that the White House did not follow proper administrative procedure, which requires certain executive actions to be preceded by a public notice and comment period.

However the appellate courts come down on the case, Mr. Obama is finding himself once again dealing with a familiar sort of Republican intransigence. With his humane and realistic immigration policy, he is trying to tackle a huge and long-running national problem: what to do with more than 11 million undocumented people who are living, working and raising families here, when the government cannot possibly apprehend or deport all of them.
On immigration, the Republicans seem to want only to savage the president’s efforts to address a pressing nationwide crisis, just as they have on health care reform. They are good at unleashing rage against Mr. Obama’s supposed lawlessness, but they have no meaningful solutions of their own.

As I have noted before, to be a Republican nowadays increasingly requires that one be a card carrying member of the KKK or some other white supremacist group.  If the undocumented immigrants were white and of European descent, none of this would be happening.