Court hands Texas a victory on immigration

Less than 24 hours before Gov. Greg Abbott delivered his first State of the State address, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen of Brownsville delivered him a notable victory against President Barack Obama.

The federal court blocked the president’s November executive order that would shield as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.

“The district court’s ruling is very clear,” Abbott said in a statement. “It prevents the president from implementing the policies in ‘any and all aspects.’”

That’s true for now, anyway.

Hanen’s injunction, while acknowledging that Texas does have the “requisite standing necessary” to pursue its legal challenge, is only temporary.

The question of whether the president acted extra-constitutionally in issuing his executive order will have to be addressed separately by trial. The Justice Department says it will appeal the decision, but it’s unclear what form that appeal will take or when it will be filed.

Hanen’s 123-page decision concludes that Texas has proven the president’s directive would result in “irreparable injury” to the Lone Star State because of costs the state would incur providing driver’s licenses to immigrants with newly authorized legal status. If the president’s order were then overturned in court, those costs could never be recouped.

Then there’s the issue of how Hanen’s ruling could impact funding for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Until this point, congressional Republicans have insisted on tying agency funding to efforts to kill Obama’s executive action. But the district court’s temporary injunction — especially if it’s upheld on appeal — could give them political cover to pass a clean funding bill.

We can only hope.

As Hanen points out in his ruling, his injunction simply preserves the status quo. Unfortunately, in this case, the status quo is a badly broken immigration system, a bitterly partisan political divide over how to address it and the future status of millions of undocumented immigrants — including 1.6 million in Texas — hanging in the balance.

Politics aside, there are serious legal issues that warrant examination by the courts, and that process is underway.

But we hope the process compels Congress to take action on comprehensive immigration reform as well.

We can only hope.

This story was originally published February 17, 2015 at 6:32 PM with the headline "Court hands Texas a victory on immigration."