President Obama’s lawyers admitted in court the Department of Homeland Security had issued work permits to illegal aliens after a Texas judge set an injunction against Obama’s executive action.
The Justice Department lawyers said Homeland Security, which is the defendant in the case, told them Wednesday that an immigration agency had approved about 2,000 applications for three-year work permits, which was part of Mr. Obama’s new amnesty, even after Judge Hanen issued his Feb. 16 injunction halting the entire program.
Top Obama officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, had repeatedly assured Congress they had fully halted the program and were complying with the order.
“The government sincerely regrets these circumstances and is taking immediate steps to remedy these erroneous three-year terms,” the administration lawyers said.
Homeland security says they are going to go back and rectify the situation but government lawyers were not even sure how many of the illegal work permits had been issued.
The lawyers also had to correct a previous number they’d given the court, when they’d said just 55 applications had been approved in the immediate aftermath of the injunction. The actual number, the lawyers admitted, was 72. They blamed “additional errors.”
The Justice Department said it learned Wednesday that Homeland Security had approved the applications. The lawyers waited until nearly midnight Thursday to inform Judge Hanen.
This is not the first “mistake” Obama’s agents have made in the case.
Previously, Obama’s lawyers were forced to admit DHS issued over 1000,000 amnesties between Obama’s November order and the February date of the initial injunction despite telling the court no amnesties had been issued.
Last week the administration turned over documents related to how it got the initial processing of the more than 100,000 applications wrong — but told the judge that neither he nor the state of Texas, the chief plaintiff that sued to stop the amnesty, should be allowed to look at the documents because they are privileged communications.
Judge Andrew Hanen, who slapped the initial injunction against Obama’s edict, is considering sanctions against the Obama Administration for this courtroom “mistake”.
This latest “mistake” is worse than the first one since it directly defies a court order and was done with the knowledge Obama’s lawyers had already deceived the judge.
