As expected, there was no ruling following a hearing in the ongoing Republican-led lawsuit seeking to end the popular Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. In a video following the hearing on Tuesday, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) said the organization asked the judge overseeing the lawsuit to hold off on ruling due to new Biden administration policy and ongoing legislation.
Also as expected, very corrupt Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his pack of Republican-led states seeking to kill the policy protecting hundreds of thousands of young people (including 109,000 in Texas) asked Judge Andrew Hanen to act now. “Lawyers for Texas on Tuesday pushed Hanen to quickly invalidate DACA,” the Associated Press reported.
Houston Chronicle reports that MALDEF asked Hanen to not immediately issue a decision due to the Biden administration’s announcement this week that it was introducing a new rule concerning the program, which the previous administration was forced to fully reinstate last December following a court decision.
“The Biden DOJ is speaking now and is discussing the Friday announcement that DHS would begin a rulemaking on #DACA and saying at minimum it will make substantive changes to the program,” civil rights litigator Karen Tumlin tweeted during the hearing. The U.S. House also recently passed permanent protections for DACA recipients. Basically there’re a lot of developments, and attorneys defending young immigrants are simply asking for more time for that to play out. But Paxton and his team want their mass deportations, and they want them now.
“Texas is up now,” Tumlin continued. “TX saying DREAM is not going to pass the Senate bc doesn't think it can get 60 votes.” U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, who introduced DREAM Act in the Senate, has been diligently working to shore up support and said he believes he’s close to getting the votes he needs to overcome a filibuster. “On the notice of future rulemaking, TX is says this is 4-6 months or more away and does not justify delay,” Tumlin wrote. “TX says the Congressional bill even if passed doesn't moot their suit.” One gets the feeling Paxton really doesn’t like immigrants.
”Hanen indicated he was already crafting his ruling in the case and asked [MALDEF vice president of litigation Nina] Perales how long she was asking him to wait,” Houston Chronicle reported. “’Six years,’ she said, referencing how long it took Paxton to sue over DACA. Laughing, Hanen said his law clerks would appreciate the extra time. He requested briefing by April 9 on how he should proceed.”
It’s true—Paxton and his pack of anti-immigrant states that now presently include Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, and West Virginia didn’t sue over the program until 2018, claiming at the time that “[o]ur lawsuit is about the rule of law, not the wisdom of any particular immigration policy,” The Washington Post reported at the time. “Left intact, DACA sets a dangerous precedent by giving the executive branch sweeping authority to ignore the laws enacted by Congress and change our nation’s immigration laws to suit a president’s own policy preferences.”
Wow, Ken really summed up well what in fact the previous president carried out at the southern border in particular, stomping on Congress to obliterate U.S. asylum law and expel asylum-seeking children thousands of times over. “The nation’s public health laws should not be used as a pretext for overriding humanitarian laws and treaties that provide life-saving protections to refugees seeking asylum and unaccompanied children,” leading health experts wrote to former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, who as of recently has been spreading COVID-19 conspiracy theories.
But you didn’t hear Ken complain about that policy. Instead, in seeking to end DACA, Texas window-shopped for just the right judge and ended up with Hanen, who already had a history of opposing Obama administration policies. Perfect—for Hanen, who has made no secret of the fact that he believes DACA is unlawful, which only heightens the need to pass permanent relief as soon as possible.