Judge Keeps Injunction on Obama’s Immigration Plan

AUSTIN, Texas—A Texas federal judge late Tuesday night declined to lift his injunction blocking the Obama administration’s immigration action to defer deportations for more than four million people in the country illegally.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen declined a request by the administration to lift his Feb. 16 ruling temporarily blocking the administration from proceeding with the immigration plans, announced by President Barack Obama in November.

Texas and officials from 25 other largely Republican states sued to stop Mr. Obama’s action, arguing that it was an unconstitutional overreach of presidential power.

The Justice Department has already appealed the matter to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is set to hear oral arguments in the case on April 17...

Judge Hanen also issued a separate ruling Tuesday night allowing the states to conduct discovery into their separate claim that the administration, beginning late last year, improperly implemented part of its immigration program, even though it had allegedly represented to Judge Hanen that it wouldn’t do so until February.

Texas made the complaint after the federal government revealed in a court filing that it had granted some immigrants deferred deportation under the DACA program for three years, the new terms called for in the November executive action, rather than the prior two-year deferral...

Judge Hanen found that the administration has made multiple “misleading” statements about the implementation of its immigration program. He ordered the administration to produce a range of documents and information by April 21 related to its representations to the court about the rollout of the program.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is leading the suit by the states, said in a statement that Judge Hanen’s ruling affirms that “once put into effect, President Obama’s executive amnesty program will be virtually impossible to reverse.” He added: “Any premature implementation could have serious consequences, inflicting irreparable harm on our state.”