HOUSTON ��Twenty-six states led by Texas were joined by the Obama administration and immigrant-rights groups in seeking to freeze a challenge to the outgoing president's immigration-law changes until President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
Trump made opposing illegal immigration a cornerstone of his campaign and pledged to reverse President Barack Obama's plan to shield more than 4 million undocumented immigrants from deportation and provide them with work permits that could lead to federal benefits like Medicaid and Social Security.
The parties agreed that it makes little sense to continue fighting over the policy given the change in administration, their lawyers said Friday in a joint filing in federal court in Brownsville, Texas. They asked the judge in the case to give Trump a month in office before deciding how to resolve the states' complaints that Obama overstepped his constitutional authority by changing immigration policy without congressional approval.
The program was blocked by a Texas judge's order just before immigration officials were to begin taking applications in early 2015. Obama's plan lost all chance of being enacted before Obama leaves office in January when a deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court refused last summer to lift that injunction.
