Zennie62Media note: we support judges from both sides of the political aisle who represent an anti-racist approach, and will call out any one from the bench who puts their racism on display and uses it as a tool to form legal decisions.
Oakland News Now – A Texas Federal Judge named Andrew Hanen ruled that DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals law, was formed “illegally” and so ordered the Biden Administration to stop any new applications of the immigration policy.
The ruling came from a December 2020 lawsuit that centered on whether President Obama had the authority to create the DACA program in 2012 and whether his administration properly implemented it. Given his opposition to DACA, many legal observers expected Judge Hanen to find a way to rule against it. Judge Hanen did. The Biden Administration has announced it will file an appeal to the ruling.
Here’s President Biden’s statement:
In 2012, the Obama-Biden Administration created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, which has allowed hundreds of thousands of young immigrants to remain in the United States, to live, study, and work in our communities. Nine years later, Congress has not acted to provide a path to citizenship for Dreamers.
Yesterday’s Federal court ruling is deeply disappointing. While the court’s order does not now affect current DACA recipients, this decision nonetheless relegates hundreds of thousands of young immigrants to an uncertain future. The Department of Justice intends to appeal this decision in order to preserve and fortify DACA. And, as the court recognized, the Department of Homeland Security plans to issue a proposed rule concerning DACA in the near future.
But only Congress can ensure a permanent solution by granting a path to citizenship for Dreamers that will provide the certainty and stability that these young people need and deserve. I have repeatedly called on Congress to pass the American Dream and Promise Act, and I now renew that call with the greatest urgency. It is my fervent hope that through reconciliation or other means, Congress will finally provide security to all Dreamers, who have lived too long in fear.
DACA was made for people from any country who were brought to the America as children illegally to be granted a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and become eligible for a work permit in the U.S. Almost since its birth as an immigration policy, Bush appointed Judge Andrew Hanen has been a vocal critic of DACA. In other words, he’s spent years going after it.
Moreover, Judge Andrew Hanen has been pegged a racist for comments he made related to it, and to immigrants coming to Texas from Mexico. Consider this entry from The New York Times of February 17th, 2015:
Judge Hanen, who was appointed in 2002 by President George W. Bush, has excoriated the Obama administration’s immigration policies in several unusually outspoken rulings. The president’s supporters have said that Texas officials, who are leading the states’ lawsuit, were venue shopping when they chose to file in Brownsville.
But at a hearing on Jan. 15, Judge Hanen said Brownsville, which sits on the border with Mexico, was an appropriate venue for the suit because its residents see the impact of immigration every day. “Talking to anyone in Brownsville about immigration is like talking to Noah about the flood,” Judge Hanen said.
In a lengthy and colorful opinion last August, Judge Hanen departed from the issue at hand to accuse the Obama administration of adopting a deportation policy that “endangers America” and was “an open invitation to the most dangerous criminals in society.”
Moreover, Judge Andrew Hanen has used a legal lens combined with that racism to carry out the elimination of DACA. In the past, Judge Hanen was forced to accept DACA – his new ruling reflects an attempt to keep it for those who’ve benefited from the law some years now, but stop it from helping anyone else, going forward.
In 2016 Hanen Was Called The Joe Arpaio of the Federal Judiciary And Anti-DACA Judge
AmericaVoice.org has the post where it features another Hanen attack attempt on DACA, this from 2016, and reveals that he was called “The Joe Arpaio of the Federal Judiciary”, referring to the racist Arizona Sheriff who’s many examples of racism, sexism, and outright power-mongering eventually landed him with the charge of being guilty of criminal contempt of court, before receiving a pardon from President Donald Trump.
On Judge Hanen, AmericaVoice.org reports:
This Wednesday, August 8 2016, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program will be back in the courts, and, this time, Texas Judge Andrew Hanen and well-known anti-immigrant zealot, will decide the program’s fate. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton spearheaded the approach to Hanen’s court. Why? To get the case in front of the judge who successfully blocked President Obama’s decision to expand DACA and extend relief to parents (DAPA) as a means of doing the DOJ’s bidding to get DACA further tied up in the court system in the short run in hopes of ending it in the Supreme Court.
By 2020 AmericaVoice.org called Texas Judge Andrew Hanen “one of the greatest threats to DACA”:
There are, unfortunately, many appointed and elected officials across the U.S. who have made a career out of enacting anti-immigrant policy. But as far as activist federal judges go, perhaps none stand out like Judge Andrew Hanen of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Appointed by former President George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 2002, Hanen has time and time again used his position to try and dismantle progressive immigration policies — and his allies on the xenophobic right have repeatedly looked to him for anti-immigrant rulings and injunctions.
Hanen’s rulings have more than once been described as bizarre and unreasonably harmful to immigrants. Many of his decisions have made headlines for their unusual nature, including an intrusive order for the government to turn over the names, addresses, and “all available contact information” for over 100,000 immigrants, and a decision demanding hundreds of government lawyers — most of whom had never appeared in his courtroom — to attend remedial ethics classes.
However, he is undoubtedly most well-known for his rulings on the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) programs, where he used his power to dismantle or try to dismantle both policies. Even now, after the June 2020 Supreme Court DACA decision, Judge Hanen and his cohorts are part of continuing legal assaults against the program.
So, Texas Judge Andrew Hanen’s most recent attack against DACA should come as no surprise, and it’s a sign of how important it is to get out and vote and be politically active in America.
Stay tuned.