The future of the lawsuit against President Barack Obama's executive orders on immigration is in doubt after a federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down a challenge to his 2012 deportation amnesty for "Dreamers."
"Neither Mississippi nor the agents have alleged a sufficiently concrete and particularized injury," the three-judge panel said,
according to The Washington Times.
Immigrant rights activists say the decision bodes well for the administration's defense of the challenge brought by Texas and 25 other states against his most recent immigration orders.
"Such a holding would result in a reversal of the district court's injunction and clear the way for immediate implementation of the president's deferred action programs, bringing relief to millions," Jessica Karp Bansal, litigation director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told the Times.
The plaintiffs, however, intend to ask the appeals court to reconsider the decision or they may escalate the matter to the Supreme Court, according to the Times.
"If the court is correct that a state does not have standing and that the [immigration] agents do not have standing, then the court is essentially saying that the federal courts are powerless to stop the president from shredding the Constitution and violating U.S. law," said Kris Kobach, lawyer for the plaintiffs, according to the Times.
The policy enacted in 2012 offers amnesty to hundreds of thousands of Dreamers, or adult illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. The executive orders announced last year would shield the parents of Dreamers from deportation.
Mississippi immigration agents and the state sued to stop the 2012 amnesty orders but a judge ruled that there were no grounds to support the suit. Specifically, Mississippi did not prove that Obama's amnesty orders increased costs for the state while agents failed to demonstrate that their discretion would be compromised by the new law, the judges ruled.
"The fact that the directives give this degree of discretion to the agent to deal with each alien on a case-by-case basis makes it highly unlikely that the agency would impose an employment sanction against an employee who exercises his discretion to detain an illegal alien," the judges said.
Oral arguments are due to begin next week on the challenge to
Obama's 2014 immigration orders after a judge imposed an injunction to stop them in February.
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