The U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) says that it “sincerely regrets” violating the injunction on issuing three-year work permits instead of two to immigrants ordered by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen. The revelation of the infraction come as a Texas court oversees an executive action lawsuit brought by 26 different states. The states allege that the President’s November broad immigration reform executive order violates the United States Constitution. The injunction bars the agency from carrying out the broadened Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program from February 16th 2015 until the injunction is lifted.
The DOJ explicitly told the court in March that once the injunction was issued, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services “immediately” stopped providing three-year work permits to DACA recipients.
However, DOJ attorneys learned Wednesday that the immigration agency had discovered 2,000 people who had accidentally been given three-year work authorizations after the injunction, the advisory said. This is on top of a much smaller group of people who’d accidentally been given expanded DACA benefits after the order, which the court already knew about. (Allissa Wickham, Kat Laskowski, LAW360.com).
The admission of the violation comes after the agency revealed that up to 100,000 individuals were granted three years of deferred deportation under the executive order before it was blocked by the suit. That revelation is currently being investigated by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general and additional information should be made available no later than May 15th. The 26 state’s case on the constitutionality of the executive order is being heard in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas (Texas et al. v. U.S. et. al., case number 1:14-cv-00254).
Source:
http://www.law360.com/immigration/articles/653504?nl_pk=11a34c2e-b5ba-4048-9ea9-424096c85660&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=immigration%29
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