Judges appear skeptical of Obama immigration actions

Police spokesman Frank Robertson said 14 people were issued summonses for obstructing public passages.

Obama announced the plan in November.

A federal judge in Texas sided with those states and issued an injunction, which the Obama administration appealed.

“To be clear”, he added, “this court expects the government to be in full compliance with this court’s injunction”. A ruling against the administration would further dim prospects of implementation of the executive action before Obama leaves office in 2016.

Hundreds rallied outside the Federal Appeals Court in New Orleans July 10, 2015.

Officials in Texas and 25 other states sued in December to stop the administration from launching the program, which would give a reprieve from deportation to some parents of US citizens and permanent residents while expanding a 2012 initiative that applies to illegal immigrants who came the United States as children.

The administration has argued that Obama acted within the law by using “prosecutorial discretion” to decide not to deport certain immigrants who do not pose a threat to public safety. “It is temporary and revocable”. “And the administration continues to have a lot of confidence in the power of those legal arguments”, he said. “Here you have this granting (of legal status) to an entire classification that puts them one step ahead for lots of benefits”, he said.

Benjamin Mizer, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Division, argued that both of the elements at the heart of Obama’s directive – stopping deportations and subsequently granting those immigrants work permits – were legally sound.

That’s because two of the three judges selected to hear this week’s arguments already weighed in once – refusing in May to overrule Brownsville-based federal judge Andrew Hanen, who halted the president’s measure in February.

From the beginning of the challenge, immigrant advocates have blamed these setbacks on what they call “venue-shopping”, saying Texas and its fellow plaintiffs specifically chose Judge Hanen’s district and the 5th Circuit for its predominantly conservative judges.

Obama took these actions, neither of which provide a path to citizenship, after Congress did not pass a broad immigration overhaul bill previous year.

Although the Obama administration won big victories at the Supreme Court this term on health care and same-sex marriage, it faces an uphill battle in federal court as it pushes to implement a third major priority: immigration reform.

But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argues that the President “unlawfully rewrote immigration law to unilaterally impose one of the largest changes in immigration policy in our nation’s history”.