Nov. 10--The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals late Monday rejected President Obama's executive order that would have granted temporary protection from deportation to about 5 million immigrants in the country illegally.
A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based court ruled 2-1 that the president has "no statutory authority" to take executive action on immigration. The program would have allowed the affected immigrants to stay and work in the country legally.
The administration argued that the executive branch was within its rights in deciding to defer deportation of selected groups of immigrants, including children who were brought to the U.S. illegally.
The decision was a victory for conservatives and 26 states, led by Texas, that sued to block the programs, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, or DAPA, and an extension of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA.
"Today, the 5th Circuit asserted that the separation of powers remains the law of the land, and the president must follow the rule of law, just like everybody else," said Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton.
"Throughout this process, the Obama administration has aggressively disregarded the constitutional limits on executive power, and Texas, leading a charge of 26 states, has secured an important victory to put a halt to the president's lawlessness," Paxton said.
Texas was joined in the lawsuit by Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also hailed the ruling, calling it "a vindication for the rule of law and the Constitution."
Abbott's statement continued: "The president's job is to enforce the immigration laws, not rewrite them. President Obama should abandon his lawless executive amnesty program and start enforcing the law today."
Immigrant legal advocates were not surprised by the ruling -- two of the three judges are conservatives who had ruled against staying an injunction by U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen, who halted the programs while the case was pending and later refused to lift it.
The government appealed Hanen's ruling, issued in Brownsville, Texas. But in May, a different three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit refused to lift Hanen's stay after hearing oral arguments from both sides.
Immigration advocates have staked their hopes on the U.S. Supreme Court. They urged the Justice Department -- which has argued the case on behalf of the administration -- to quickly seek the high court's intervention.
"We're talking about millions of immigrant families. They've been waiting and they live in fear every day of their lives of deportation, unable to contribute to their communities," said Nora Preciado, of Law Center in Los Angeles, which filed a brief in support of the federal government's case.
If the high court takes the case, advocates plan to press them to expedite it, as they have other high-profile cases in the past, Preciado said.
"It's a case of national importance: We're talking about 26 states suing the federal government and almost 5 million people affected," she said, "we're hopeful the Supreme Court will come down on the right side of this case."
The new set of immigration policies were designed to protect from deportation as many as 5 million people living in the U.S. illegally, and included a three-year reprieve for parents of children with legal status.
When Obama issued the order last year, he said the changes were made to keep parents together with children who had legal status. As many as 4.1 million people may have fit that criteria, the administration estimated at the time.
The changes also expanded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, begun in 2012, which has protected nearly 600,000 young people from removal. The new rules did away with an age limit and opened the program to anyone here since 2010, instead of the old cutoff of 2007. An estimated 300,000 more young men and women would be eligible.
Republican lawmakers applauded the court's decision, saying it imposed appropriate limits on what actions a sitting president can take without a change to the immigration laws by Congress.
"President Obama's decision to ignore the limits placed on his power and act unilaterally to rewrite our nation's immigration laws is an affront to the Constitution," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said in a statement.
The 70-page majority opinion by Judge Jerry Smith, joined by Jennifer Walker Elrod, rejected administration arguments that the district judge abused his discretion with a nationwide order and that the states lacked standing to challenge Obama's executive orders.
They acknowledged an argument that an adverse ruling would discourage potential beneficiaries of the plan from cooperating with law enforcement authorities or paying taxes. "But those are burdens that Congress knowingly created, and it is not our place to second-guess those decisions," Smith wrote.
In a 53-page dissent, Judge Carolyn Dineen King said the administration was within the law, casting the decision to defer action on some deportations as "quintessential exercises of prosecutorial discretion," and noting that the Department of Homeland Security has limited resources.
"Although there are approximately 11.3 million removable aliens in this country today, for the last several years Congress has provided the Department of Homeland Security with only enough resources to remove approximately 400,000 of those aliens per year," King wrote.
Smith, 68, was appointed to the bench by President Reagan in 1987. Three years ago, during oral arguments in a case involving the Affordable Care Act, Smith he ordered the Justice Department to provide the court with a three-page, single-spaced report explaining Obama's views on judicial review.
Elrod, 49, dissented two years ago when the full 5th Circuit struck down a Texas city ordinance that effectively made it a crime for those who had immigrated illegally to rent homes. In her dissent, which was joined by Smith, Elrod said that the ordinance "does not constitute a regulation of immigration." That case was Villas at Parkside Partners vs. City of Farmers Branch.
King, 77, is a judicial moderate appointed by President Carter in 1979.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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