BROWNSVILLE, TX (WTAQ) – A federal judge says he might order sanctions against the U.S. Justice Department, if he finds that the agency misled him on exactly when an Obama immigration order was carried out.
Judge Andrew Hanen held a hearing Thursday, in a lawsuit by Wisconsin and 25 other states that want the president’s executive immigration actions ruled unconstitutional.
In a sometimes tense hearing in Brownsville Texas, Hanen went back and forth with the Justice Department on whether the judge was misled. Hanen believed the administration would hold off on a key Obama order until the judge ruled on a request for a preliminary injunction.
However, the government had already given three-year reprieves from deportation to 108,000 people.
It was part of a program that keeps young immigrants from being deported if they’re illegally brought to the U.S. as children. Those people also received work permits.
Hanen said he was an “idiot” in believing a Justice Department lawyer who said in January that nothing would occur in the program until February 18th.
Justice Department attorney Kathleen Hartnett apologized for any confusion, but said the reprieves were granted under guidelines issued in 2012 — and the injunction which the judge granted did not stop those moves.
Hanen said the reprieves were supposed to be for 2 years, not 3 — and his injunction should have halted them.
(Story courtesy of Wheeler News Service)
