The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not start accepting applications Wednesday for a program designed to shield more than four million immigrants from deportation, a direct result of this week's federal court ruling that temporarily halts an expansion of the program to people over 30 and to immigrant parents living in the country illegally.
The reaction to this decision runs along party lines. U.S. Congressman LloydDoggett, an Austin Democrat, says the deportation relief provided to people who came to the country as children boosts the economy by putting people to work.
"At some point, reality will prevail and Texas is part of the union and it will be subject to this executive order from which all Texans will benefit," Doggett says.
Texas Republican leaders, however, have been hailing the decision. Gov. Greg Abbottspoke of it yesterday in his State of the State address.
"The very last lawsuit that I filed as attorney general was a lawsuit to stop President Obama's lawless executive action," he said.
The federal judge in Brownsville, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, temporarily blocked new programs that President Obama announced in November. Those would expand deferred deportation to people over 30 and to people who have lived in the U.S. for at least five years and are parents of American citizens or legal permanent residents. The U.S. Justice Department will appeal Hanen's injunction to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appeals court in New Orleans that takes up cases coming out of Texas.
