Not so fast, cowboy. (Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who led the charge against Obama's immigration actions.)
In the lawsuit that 26 mostly GOP-led states have filed challenging Obama's 2014 executive actions that provide deportation relief for up to five million immigrants, the states' lawyers have to prove that Obama's actions cause the states irreparable harm. If it doesn't harm them, they don't have "standing" to bring the case in the eyes of the law. So in their quest to prove the states are indeed harmed, they've argued, in part, that providing emergency medical care, education, and marriage licenses is a big financial burden. That's specious at best,
reports Pema Levy.
Obama's new policy applies only to undocumented people who are already in the country. Supreme Court precedent, federal law, and many state laws require these GOP-led states to absorb the costs of emergency health care and education for undocumented people. Since the people affected by Obama's policy already live here, any costs related to their health and education are already being shouldered by the states and cause no new harm.
Judge Andrew Hanen, the George W. Bush-appointed judge presiding over the case in Texas, made this exact point during a hearing on January 15.
"These aliens are already here," Hanen asked the attorney arguing for Texas. "So what—how is the state directly damaged?
Many immigration activists have
feared Judge Hanen's forthcoming decision based on a previous ruling that many considered gratuitously anti-immigrant.
But immigration attorney David Leopold has argued that Hanen's ruling may, in fact, go a different way—precisely because the states have made a weak argument about why they have standing to bring the case in the first place.
First, and perhaps most importantly, the State of Texas has filed a bogus complaint; it reads more like a factually inaccurate press release than a legal document. It fails to describe exactly how the plaintiff states are or will be concretely harmed by the temporary deportation reprieves; especially when the Administration has used all resources allocated to it annually by Congress to detain and deport undocumented immigrants -- approximately 400,000 people a year -- leading some to label President Obama the "deporter-in-chief." Further, at least one federal court has dismissed a similar challenge to the President's executive actions brought by Joe Arpaio, the infamous anti-immigrant sheriff of Maricopa County Arizona, concluding Arpaio lacked standing to sue. While the decision is not binding on Judge Hanen, its cogent analysis of the complex legal doctrine of standing certainly provides persuasive authority for the dismissal of the Texas lawsuit.
Hanen's ruling is expected any day now.