This guy, I swear.
Best mugshot ever
Following through on a months-old promise, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Tuesday to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, leading a seven-state coalition against an Obama-era immigration measure that protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants nationwide from deportation, including more than 120,000 in Texas.
Paxton first threatened in June 2017 to sue over the program if President Donald Trump’s administration had not ended it by September. After federal court rulings blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to end the program, Paxton wrote in January that he would consider filing suit if DACA still stood in June.
But a recent ruling in favor of DACA seems to have shifted up Paxton’s timeline. The announcement comes exactly a week after a federal judge in Washington, D.C. ordered the Trump administration to continue the program and reopen it to new applicants. That was the third — and by far the strongest — rebuke of Trump’s efforts to rescind the program. Judges in California and New York had previously ordered the administration to renew work permits for immigrants enrolled in the program.
[…]
Liberal groups and lawmakers quickly condemned Paxton’s lawsuit, with state Rep. Rafael Anchia calling it “not only bad policy, it’s bad politics.”
“Instead of wasting taxpayer funds to pick on these Americans without status, the Attorney General should join the bipartisan chorus calling on Congress to fix a broken immigration system that denies these kids their rightful place at the American table,” said Anchia, a Dallas Democrat who chairs the Mexican American Legislative Caucus.
Ending the program would cost Texas more than 100,000 workers and nearly billions of dollars in GDP losses, MALC said in a press release. Ending DACA will lead to “the separation of countless families,” said Cristina Tzintzun, the founder of Jolt Texas, a new group working to mobilize young Latino voters.
Paxton warned Tuesday that conceding the presidential power to establish a program like DACA sets a dangerous precedent that could allow executives to “ignore the will of the people” and set their own policies on a long list of policy points. Paxton also criticized “activist judges” in federal court for keeping in place an “unconstitutional” law.
See here for some background. There really is no dimension along which destroying DACA is a good idea, not that such things matter to the likes of Paxton. DACA also polls really well, including among Republicans, which may be why Paxton could only round up five co-conspirators this time. And you know, the guy who goes court-shopping for nationwide injunctions against laws he doesn’t like can take that “activist judges” crap and stick it where the sun don’t shine. I never thought I’d want to see someone get convicted of a felony more than I wanted to see Tom DeLay get convicted of a felony, but I really really want to see Ken Paxton get convicted of a felony. The Chron and RG Ratcliffe have more.
Hanen, the judge drawn for this case, is the guy who not only struck down DAPA as unconstitutional, he was so upset with the government’s case and presentation, that he mandated that all the lawyers undergo mandatory ethics classes!
I’m not seeing this go to well for the open border enthusiasts.
*too
Judge Hanen was not randomly drawn to preside over this case. He is the only Article III judge in the Brownsville division, which is why this case (along with the DAPA case) were filed there.
This is forum shopping, pure and simple.