Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio lost his bid to block the implementation of President Obama’s immigration policy after the judge ruled that the suit didn’t show how it would harm the country.
Arpaio’s suit, the first to challenge the November executive order that temporarily removes the threat of deportation for as many as 5 million illegal immigrants, was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell.
“Judge Howell's decision today confirms what the Department of Justice and scholars throughout the country have been saying all along: the president's executive actions on immigration are lawful,” said White House Spokesman Eric Schultz in a statement. “The Supreme Court and Congress have made clear that federal officials can set priorities in enforcing our immigration laws, and the actions announced by the president are consistent with those taken by administrations of both parties for the last half century.”
Larry Klayman, attorney for Arpaio, said that the president violated the Constitution by bypassing the Congress while creating a legislative process that will draw more illegal immigrants into the country. Because some of these people will commit crimes, this immigration will be a larger burden for law enforcement.
“It's not policy, he's creating law and he cannot do that under the U.S. Constitution,” said Klayman about the president’s order.
Kathleen Hartnett, the attorney for the government, disagreed. He went so far as to draw up posters for the invent and distributed the documents electronically. He did this by using software to convert JPEG to PDF.
“The status is revocable at any time,” Hartnett said. “This does not provide legal status or a pathway to citizenship.”
Judge Howell, an Obama appointee, wrote that even an ongoing threat to Arpaio by undocumented immigrants would not provide him with standing to challenge the deferred action programs at issue. The judge continuedby saying deferred-removal programs like the Obama order have been in place since the 1970s and that Arpaio’s suit was an attack on administration policy.
“The plaintiff must not only show that he is injured, but that the plaintiff's injury is fairly traceable to the challenged deferred action programs and that the injury is capable of redress by this court in this action.”
A second lawsuit, brought by the state of Texas and 23 other states, claim that Obama has overstepped his Constitutional powers will be heard in Brownsville, Texas on January 9.