By Bob Unruh
A federal appeals court has ruled that Barack Obama's border-opening Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program isn't legal, and Joe Biden of course immediately blamed Republicans for the collapse of the Democrat program.
It was a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that determined Obama simply didn't have the authority to launch the program.
The court ordered that there could be no more applicants accepted for the program, but as there already are hundreds of thousands of people involved, said the protections for illegal aliens could continue – for now.
Fox News reported on Biden's immediately assignment of blame for the problems stemming from Obama's illegal action to Republicans.
Biden said, in a statement, "I am disappointed in today's Fifth Circuit decision holding that DACA is unlawful. The court’s stay provides a temporary reprieve for DACA recipients, but one thing remains clear: the lives of Dreamers remain in limbo.
"Today’s decision is the result of continued efforts by Republican state officials to strip DACA recipients of the protections and work authorization that many have now held for over a decade. And while we will use the tools we have to allow Dreamers to live and work in the only country they know as home, it is long past time for Congress to pass permanent protections for Dreamers, including a pathway to citizenship."
The appeals court returned the case to the trial court for further action.
"A district court is in the best position to review the administrative record in the rulemaking proceeding and determine whether our holdings as to the 2012 DACA Memorandum fully resolve issues concerning the Final Rule," the court wrote.
Fox explained, "Biden specifically blamed 'MAGA-Republican officials' for the court’s decision as several Republican-led states sued the federal government over the DACA program. Governors allege the program negatively impacts their local economies as they have to foot the bill for DACA recipients’ education and healthcare."
The costs for those states actually run into the hundreds of millions of dollars annually to subsidize the lifestyles of illegal aliens that Obama created the program to protect.
Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley, a law professor and popular commentator on legal and constitutional issues, pointed out, "For years, I have written that I considered President Barack Obama’s action to create Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to be unlawful. The move was part of an open effort to circumvent Congress when it failed to yield to the demands of President Obama and discarded with obligations under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Now the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has upheld a lower court in ruling against DACA."
He noted judges James Ho, Kurt Engelhardt and Priscilla Richman "found that President Obama did indeed circumvent Congress and evaded the limits imposed in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) when it enacted DACA in 2012."
The court's ruling specifically said, "Under the first factor, DACA’s deficiencies are severe. The district court’s excellent opinion correctly identified fundamental substantive defects in the program. The DACA Memorandum contradicts significant portions of the INA. There is no possibility that DHS could obviate these conflicts on remand."
Turley noted, "The Biden administration fought to block any judicial review by challenging the standing of Texas to bring the action. However, it did little to refute the claims of injury raised by the state, including an expert who estimated that DACA recipients overall impose a cost of more than $250,000,000 on Texas per year and another $533,000,000 annually in costs to local Texas communities."
The judges, in fact, said, "Texas contends that the rescission of DACA would cause some recipients to leave, thereby reducing the financial burdens on the State. It cites a survey of over three thousand DACA recipients in which twenty-two percent of respondents said they were likely or very likely to leave the country if DACA ended. The Government presents evidence that many recipients would remain without DACA, but that does not controvert Texas’s showing that some would leave."
The ruling from the appeals court affirmed the conclusion of U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen,, who now will get the case back, in his original decision that Obama's Department of Homeland Security had implemented DACA in violation of the APA.
Courthouse News reported the case could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, and Turley noted that could set an even worse precedent for the Obama program.
A coalition of states had brought the challenge to Obama's decision to shred the requirements of the Immigration and Nationality Act created by Congress.
Biden, in response to the original judicial ruling, "worked up a new DACA rule and published it on the Federal Register on August 30, putting it through a public notice-and-comment process," which Hanen said should have happened at the start, the report said.
Author: Bob Unruh