A legal challenge to President Obama’s unconstitutional executive fiat granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens has managed so far to block implementation of his dictates and the President isn’t happy about it.
Right now, the case resides in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals after Judge Andrew Hanen ruled that the President’s order was without basis in constitutional law.
Worse for the administration, in the next few weeks, the states fighting to stop Mr. Obama may score their biggest victory yet — achieving a long-enough delay in the lower courts to prevent the Supreme Court from even considering and ruling on the case until after next year’s presidential election. That timing would leave any final decision about immigration to Mr. Obama’s successor.
Obama wants to push the case directly to the Supreme Court, which has been very kind to him, in order to process millions of illegals in time for the 2016 Presidential election.
The immediate holdup is the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, where a three-judge panel has been deliberating the president’s actions for more than three months — far longer than the court’s goal to decide “within 60 days after argument” in most cases. White House officials are bracing for a loss in the appeals court, in part because two of the three judges have already ruled against the administration in an earlier decision.
But Mr. Obama needs a ruling soon from that panel so his lawyers can try to persuade the Supreme Court to take the case. If the decision does not come quickly, his hopes for a late-hour appeal to the Supreme Court this year will disappear.
The naked political nature of Obama is on clear display as an Administration which can’t find the time or energy to secure the border could quickly and with ruthless efficiency set up a huge new bureaucracy to quickly process millions of illegals in time to vote in 2016.
But the president’s advisers urged him to move quickly to establish the program, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans. If millions signed up by the time Mr. Obama left office, they said, the next president would find it difficult to reverse, even if a Republican wins the White House.
Aides mapped out a plan to build a new bureaucracy to process millions of applications from undocumented immigrants. Officials quickly signed a $7.8 million lease for a Washington-area building and began interviews to hire 1,000 new employees. Those efforts were scuttled when a Texas judge ordered a halt to the program.
Fortunately, Obama can’t bully the state of Texas who are the lead among the 26 states who filed for an injunction against Obama’s edict. Even if the 5th Circuit rendered a decision soon, it would require help from Texas to get Obama’s case before his sympathetic Supreme Court before the next term begins.
But lawyers for the State of Texas, whose lawsuit is seeking to stop Mr. Obama, will then have the right to seek an extension beyond the usual 30 days to file briefs, another delay that could get in the way of prompt Supreme Court consideration.
“The petition seems like it would have to be filed by Nov. 27 or 30, if Texas is being cooperative,” for the case to be hear in the current term, Mr. Elwood said.
In Obama’s typical lawless style, his minions have been pressing forward with every step to force more illegal aliens into the voting pool.
White House officials and advocates are pressing forward on parts of the president’s executive actions that were not blocked by the courts, including new enforcement priorities for immigration authorities that have reduced the number of deportations.
Officials are also trying to publicize a recent procedural change that could help hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who are married to American citizens or legal residents to apply for green cards.
Since the GOP majorities in Congress have refused to defund Obama’s actions, it is only the Courts which have proven to be the bulwark against further erosion of immigration law.
