Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking a judge to allow an investigation of the closed-door workings of President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty, following the discovery that 100,000 illegal immigrants had secretly been given three-year amnesty documents well before a promised start date.
“The Obama Administration appears to have already been issuing expanded work permits, in direct contradiction to what they told a federal judge previously in this litigation,” Paxton said in a Thursday statement describing his legal request, which was signed by the governors or attorneys general of 26 states.
“The circumstances behind this must be investigated, and the motion we seek would help us determine to what extent the Administration might have misrepresented the facts in this case,” he added.
The judge has frozen Obama’s amnesty since Feb. 16, pending the future decisions of appeals court judges. Without the judge’s decision, Obama’s deputies already would be preparing work permits and tax rebates for illegals.
Paxton’s hardball response was cheered by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. “I commend Attorney General Paxton for continuing to hold the Obama Administration accountable, and I’m confident an investigation would find the Administration knowingly or recklessly misled a Federal Court in issuing thousands of amnesty documents illegally,” he said Thursday.
“President Obama has continued to show complete disregard for the Rule of Law by acting beyond his Constitutional authority at every stage of this process,” he added.
The judge, Andrew Hanen, showed his skepticism about the administration in a 2014 case, when he said border officers were being used by the administration to illegally transfer foreign children from Central America to their parents living illegally in U.S. cities.
On Feb. 16, Hanen froze Obama’s two-part amnesty, which was intended to provide residency, work permits and tax rebates to at least four million illegals, after concluding it likely violated the federal government’s rule-making process.
The amnesty for roughly 1 million younger illegals is called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and it was launched in June 2012, five months before the 2012 election. Obama’s November amnesty extends the work permits given to the younger illegals from two years to three years.
The amnesty for roughly 4 million parent illegals is called DAPA, or Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents. Obama’s plan would give them work permits, tax rebates, Social Security numbers, drivers’ license and a fast-track to citizenship.
In November, administration statements had declared it would not start the DACA upgrade until Feb. 18, and would not start the DAPA amnesty until in May 2015. On Jan. 15, Obama’s lawyer told the judge that “no applications for the revised DACA … would be accepted until the 18th of February.”
But Obama’s deputies were already handing out the three-year DACA amnesties. By mid-February, 100,000 three-year amnesties had been given to illegals who had received two-year amnesties in 2012 or 2013.
On March 3, Obama’s lawyers admitted to the judge that officials had already given the three-year DACA amnesties to 100,000 people, according to a March 4 article in the Washington Examiner.
“Out of an abundance of caution, however, Defendants wish to bring one issue to the Court’s attention,” said the administration’s document given to the judge. “Between November 24, 2014 and the issuance of the Court’s [Feb. 16] Order, USCIS granted three-year periods of deferred action to approximately 100,000 individuals who had requested deferred action under the original 2012 DACA guidelines.”
The officials excused the deception by claiming that the announced Feb. 18 start date “may have led to confusion about when USCIS had begun providing three-year terms of deferred action to individuals already eligible for deferred action under 2012 DACA.”
The administration’s “confusion” was exposed March 3, the same day that top GOP leaders allied with Democrats to pressure GOP legislators to pass a budget bill for the Department of Homeland Security. The budget did pass, and it doesn’t block funding for Obama’s unpopular and possibly illegal amnesty.
