History > 2015 > USA > Federal justice (I)

Mohammed Hafiz with a photo of his son,

who was killed in the Blackwater shooting.

Photograph:

Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press

Justice for Blackwater Victims

NYT

APRIL 14, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/opinion/justice-for-blackwater-victims.html

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Given Death Penalty

in Boston Marathon Bombing

 

MAY 15, 2015

The New York Times

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

BOSTON — Two years after bombs in two backpacks transformed the Boston Marathon from a sunny rite of spring to a smoky battlefield with bodies dismembered, a federal jury on Friday condemned Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death for his role in the 2013 attack.

In a sweeping rejection of the defense case, the jury found that death was the appropriate punishment for six of 17 capital counts — all six related to Mr. Tsarnaev’s planting of a pressure-cooker bomb on Boylston Street, which his lawyers never disputed. Mr. Tsarnaev, 21, stood stone-faced in court, his hands folded in front of him, as the verdict was read, his lawyers standing grimly at his side.

Immediate reaction was mostly subdued.

“Happy is not the word I would use,” said Karen Brassard, who suffered grievous leg injuries in the bombing. “There’s nothing happy about having to take somebody’s life. I’m satisfied, I’m grateful that they came to that conclusion, because for me I think it was the just conclusion.”

She said she understood that all-but-certain appeals meant the case could drag out over years if not decades. “But right now,” she said, “it feels like we can take a breath and kind of actually breathe again.”

The bombings two years ago turned one of this city’s most cherished athletic events into a grim tragedy — the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001. Three people were killed, and 17 people lost at least one leg. More than 240 others sustained serious injuries.

Last month, after deliberating for 11 hours, the jury found Mr. Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 charges against him in connection with the bombings and the death a few days later of a fourth person, an M.I.T. police officer. The same jury spent 14 hours over three days deliberating the sentence.

With its decision, the jury rejected virtually every argument that the defense put forth, including the centerpiece of its case — that Mr. Tsarnaev’s older brother, Tamerlan, had held a malevolent sway over him and led him into committing the crimes.

According to verdict forms that the jurors completed, only three of the 12 jurors believed that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had acted under his brother’s influence.

Beyond that, the jury put little stock in any part of the defense. Only two jurors believed that Mr. Tsarnaev had expressed sorrow and remorse for his actions, a stinging rebuke to the assertion by Sister Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun and renowned death penalty opponent, that he was “genuinely sorry” for what he had done.

When the jury entered the courtroom at 3:10 p.m. Friday, the forewoman passed an envelope to Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. of United States District Court, who had presided over the case. Jurors remained standing while the clerk read aloud the 24-page verdict form, which took 20 minutes. It was not clear until the end that the sentence was death, though all signs along the way pointed in that direction.

Not a sound was heard in the packed courtroom throughout the proceedings. Those in attendance — survivors, victims’ families, the public, the news media — had been sternly warned that any outburst would amount to contempt of court.

The Tsarnaev verdict goes against the grain in Massachusetts, which has no death penalty for state crimes. Throughout the trial, polls also showed that residents overwhelmingly favored life in prison for Mr. Tsarnaev.

Many respondents said that life in prison for one so young would be a fate worse than death, and some worried that execution would make him a martyr.

But all the jurors in his case had to be “death qualified” — willing to impose the death penalty to serve. In that sense, the jury was not representative of the state.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh said in a statement that the sentencing brought “a small amount of closure to the survivors, families and all impacted by the violent and tragic events.” His statement avoided explicit praise of the verdict.

Some legal experts said that the jury’s 14 hours of deliberations seemed relatively quick in a case this complex. Eric M. Freedman, a death penalty specialist at Hofstra University Law School, said that the relative speed of the verdict could provide the defense with two possible grounds for appeal: “the failure to grant a change of venue, despite the overwhelming evidence the defense presented about community attitudes in Boston,” he said, and “the failure to instruct the jury that if a single juror refused to vote for death, the result would be a life sentence.”

“Unfortunately for all concerned,” Mr. Freedman said, “this is only the first step on a long road.”

But other lawyers said that 14 hours was not all that fast and doubted that it provided grounds for appeal.

“I’ve seen juries return verdicts in 25 minutes if the evidence is strong,” said Michael Kendall, a former federal prosecutor in Boston. “But rarely do you have a case like this — a crime of such enormity to start with, plus a mountain of evidence and a defendant who is so unsympathetic.”

He said he thought the jury had been struck by Mr. Tsarnaev’s callousness. “After he blows up this child on purpose,” he said of 8-year-old Martin Richard, the youngest of the victims, “he’s out at the convenience store buying milk, then he smokes a little dope and plans on blowing up New York.”

Among those in the courtroom were Bill and Denise Richard, the parents of Martin and of a daughter, Jane, who was 7 when she lost a leg in the attack. Despite their losses, the Richard family had called for Mr. Tsarnaev to receive life in prison. They said they feared that appeals would drag out a death sentence for years, making it hard for them to move forward with their lives.

The jury, which was not sequestered, had been told to shield itself from news accounts of the trial, and it is not known whether word of the Richard family’s decision had filtered through to any of the jurors.

Many of the jurors looked emotionally depleted after the sentence was read, with some near tears. They had been involved in the case since January, when jury selection began, and had heard testimony over 10 weeks, much of it gruesome and horrific as survivors described losing their limbs and their loved ones.

Judge O’Toole did not set a date for formally sentencing Mr. Tsarnaev. But at that point, some of the survivors will have a chance to tell the court — and Mr. Tsarnaev — how the bombings had affected their lives.

It was the first time a federal jury had sentenced a terrorist to death in the post-Sept. 11 era, according to Kevin McNally, director of the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project, which coordinates the defense in capital punishment cases.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch called the death sentence a “fitting punishment.”

In Russia, when informed of the verdict by a reporter, Mr. Tsarnaev’s father, Anzor, simply exhaled and hung up. He then turned off his cellphone.

Prosecutors had portrayed Mr. Tsarnaev, who immigrated to Cambridge, Mass., from the Russian Caucasus with his family in 2002, as a coldblooded, unrepentant jihadist who sought to kill innocent Americans in retaliation for the deaths of innocent Muslims in American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“After all of the carnage and fear and terror that he has caused, the right decision is clear,” a federal prosecutor, Steven Mellin, said in his closing argument. “The only sentence that will do justice in this case is a sentence of death.”

With death sentences, an appeal is all but inevitable, and the process generally takes years if not decades to play out. Of the 80 federal defendants sentenced to death since 1988, only three, including Timothy J. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, have been executed. Some of the sentences were vacated or the defendants died or committed suicide.

Most cases are still tied up in appeal.

Alexandra Odynova and Andrew Roth contributed reporting from Moscow.

A version of this article appears in print on May 16, 2015,
on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Tsarnaev Given Death Sentence in Boston Attack.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Given Death Penalty in Boston Marathon Bombing,
NYT, MAY 15, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/us/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-death-sentence.html

Breaking Laws in the Mortgage Bubble

MAY 15, 2015

The New York Times

The Opinion Pages | Editorial

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

The government won a big victory this week in a case against two banks that were found to have systematically deceived investors about shoddy mortgage securities they peddled during the housing bubble. “The magnitude of falsity, conservatively measured, is enormous,” wrote Judge Denise Cote of Federal District Court in Manhattan in a strongly worded 361-page ruling.

The banks are Nomura Holdings of Japan and the Royal Bank of Scotland. The investors are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-run mortgage agencies. The case was brought by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the overseer of Fannie and Freddie.

The government’s victory in this case raises an interesting question: If the relatively unknown housing finance agency could prevail over foreign banks, why haven’t far more powerful regulators and prosecutors at the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission done more to expose and redress wrongdoing by big Wall Street banks in the mortgage bubble?

The post-bubble role of the housing finance agency has been important but relatively narrow: to recoup losses attributable to securities law violations and, in some cases, fraud by banks that sold mortgages to Fannie and Freddie. It has settled most of its suits, and it went to court against Nomura and R.B.S. when the two refused to settle. Assuming an expected appeal fails, the banks will owe damages estimated at about $500 million.

The Justice Department and the S.E.C., by contrast, have a broader obligation to enforce rights and laws and to punish and deter wrongdoing, a mission that comes with vast investigatory and enforcement powers. Yet in cases involving major banks and the mortgage bubble, they have acted as if their main job is to extract fines. They have relied almost exclusively on big settlements without demanding accountability. Banks have rarely been required to admit wrongdoing, and names have rarely been named.

Moreover, the Justice Department has approached the process in a way that has sidestepped the need for a judge to sign off on the mortgage-related settlements, a procedure intended to ensure that settlement deals are in the public interest.

The trial against Nomura and R.B.S. rebuts the widespread notion that banks’ greed during the bubble did not amount to lawbreaking, that somehow it was the housing crash, and not deceptive practices, that caused the bonds to collapse. And it is a reminder that the banks that settled, by avoiding a detailed public airing of their conduct, have been shielded from full accountability for the consequences of their behavior. This does not bode well for the stability of the economy or the rule of law.
 

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A version of this editorial appears in print on May 16, 2015, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Breaking Laws in the Mortgage Bubble.

Breaking Laws in the Mortgage Bubble,
NYT, MAY 15, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/opinion/
breaking-laws-in-the-mortgage-bubble.html

Overkill on a C.I.A. Leak Case

MAY 13, 2015

The New York Times

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

The Opinion Pages | Editorial

Would America really be safer if Jeffrey Sterling had been sentenced to more than 20 years in prison?

That outrageous punishment would have satisfied the Justice Department in the sentencing of Mr. Sterling, the former Central Intelligence Agency officer convicted of leaking classified information about Iran’s nuclear program to a reporter for The New York Times.

A federal judge in Virginia rightly believed that was far too long. In a significant rebuke to the Obama administration’s dogged-yet-selective crusade against leaks, Judge Leonie Brinkema of Federal District Court quickly rejected the government’s request and sentenced Mr. Sterling to three and a half years behind bars.

In January, Mr. Sterling was found guilty of violating federal laws, including the Espionage Act, by disclosing details about a covert operation involving a former Russian scientist and C.I.A. informant who gave Iran intentionally faulty schematics in an attempt to forestall the country’s nuclear capabilities. James Risen, a reporter for The Times, wrote about the operation in his 2006 book, “State of War.” He has refused to identify his sources despite facing a threat of jail time that ended only days before Mr. Sterling’s trial.

The government argued at trial that the leak had disrupted the operation and endangered national security. Judge Brinkema did not appear to buy that claim, which was called “overwrought hyperbole” by one C.I.A. veteran in a letter to the court. She instead focused on Mr. Sterling’s jeopardizing the safety of an informant, whose identity she said was “the most critical secret” an intelligence officer keeps. “If you knowingly reveal these secrets, there’s going to be a price to be paid.”

Mr. Sterling, who maintains his innocence and may appeal his conviction, is only the latest target of the Obama administration, which has charged more public servants with leaks to journalists than all previous administrations combined. He joins at least three other C.I.A. officers and contractors in receiving prison time for leaking classified information.

In light of these prosecutions, it is worth considering the degree to which this White House seems to value secrecy over accountability.

It fixates on certain leakers, and the reporters they work with, even as it neglects to prosecute anyone for, say, the torture of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere, or for the intentional destruction of videotapes documenting that torture.

It pleads with newspapers not to print the name of a senior officer behind the C.I.A.’s interrogation and targeted-killing programs, even as it allowed David Petraeus, the former C.I.A. chief, to plead to a misdemeanor for giving his biographer (and lover) classified information, including the names of covert officers. Mr. Petraeus got probation and a fine.

Of course, we already know that torture and drone strikes pose a profound threat to America’s national security and the safety of its citizens abroad. After all, the murderers of the Islamic State did not dress their victims in orange jumpsuits for no reason; they did it to evoke the horrors of the Guantánamo prison camp.

The government enjoys great flexibility from courts and the American public in deciding how best to protect national security. When it abuses that flexibility — by going after journalists and their sources with a century-old law intended for Communist spies, or by to failing to hold torturers accountable — the nation is made less safe.

Correction: May 13, 2015

An earlier version of this editorial referred imprecisely to the Justice Department’s sentencing recommendation for Mr. Sterling. The Justice Department sought a “severe” sentence, and agreed that a sentencing range of 19.5 TO 24 years had been correctly calculated under federal guidelines, but did not specifically recommend a number of years.

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A version of this editorial appears in print on May 13, 2015,
on page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: Overkill on a C.I.A. Leak Case.

Overkill on a C.I.A. Leak Case,
NYT, MAY 13, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/opinion/overkill-on-a-cia-leak-case.html

Ex-Blackwater Guards

Given Long Terms for Killing Iraqis

APRIL 13, 2015

The New York Times

By MATT APUZZO

WASHINGTON — One by one, four former Blackwater security contractors wearing blue jumpsuits and leg irons stood before a federal judge on Monday and spoke publicly for the first time since a deadly 2007 shooting in Iraq.

The men had been among several private American security guards who fired into Baghdad’s crowded Nisour Square on Sept. 16, 2007, and last October they were convicted of killing 14 unarmed Iraqis in what prosecutors called a wartime atrocity. Yet on Monday, as they awaited sentences that they knew would send them to prison for most if not all of their lives, they defiantly asserted their innocence.

“I know for a fact that I will be exonerated, in this life and the next,” said Paul A. Slough.

“I am very sorry for the loss of life,” Dustin L. Heard said. “But I cannot say in all honesty to the court that I believe I did anything wrong.”

“As God is my witness,” Evan S. Liberty said, he fired only at insurgents who were shooting at him.

“The verdict is wrong,” said Nicholas A. Slatten, a former Army sniper who was convicted of murder for starting the melee with a precision shot through the head of a young man stopped at an intersection. “You know I am innocent, sir.”

The judge, Royce C. Lamberth, strongly disagreed, sentencing Mr. Slatten to life in prison and handing 30-year sentences to the three others. A fifth former guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway of California, had pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and testified against his former colleagues. He has not been sentenced but testified that he hoped to avoid any prison time.

The ruling ended a long investigation into the Nisour Square shooting, a signature, gruesome moment in the Iraq war that highlighted America’s reliance on private contractors to maintain security in combat zones.

No such company was more powerful than Blackwater, which won more than $1 billion in government contracts. Its employees, most of them military veterans, protected American diplomats overseas and became enmeshed in the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine counterterrorism operations. Its founder, Erik Prince, was a major donor to the Republican Party.

In Iraq, Blackwater was perceived as so powerful that its employees could kill anyone and get away with it, said Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani, whose 9-year-old son, Ali, was killed in Nisour Square.

“Blackwater had power like Saddam Hussein,” Mr. Kinani said in a long, emotional appeal to the judge on Monday. “The power comes from the United States.” He added later: “Today we see who will win. The law? Or Blackwater?”

Nearly 100 supporters crowded the large courtroom, many of them wearing Blackwater shirts. Friends, relatives and former military friends spoke on behalf of the four men, describing them, through tears, as patriotic, small-town men who deeply loved their families and their country.

Judge Lamberth, a former captain in the Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, was also moved. He choked up as he described the defendants as “good young men who’ve never been in trouble, who served their country.” But he said the wild, unprovoked shooting “just cannot ever be condoned by a court.”

The sentences were a long-fought diplomatic victory for the United States, which asked a skeptical Iraqi government and its people to be patient and trust the American criminal justice system. That faith was tested many times over the past eight years as the case suffered several setbacks, many of which were of the government’s own making.

Despite those missteps, Judge Lamberth praised the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for uncovering and presenting to the world “the truth about what happened at Nisour Square.”

At trial, witnesses said that the shooting began almost immediately after a convoy of armored Blackwater trucks rolled into the traffic circle. The contractors said they were shot at by Iraqi insurgents, and returned fire. But dozens of Iraqis and several of their former Blackwater colleagues testified that the shooting was unprovoked.

“There was a lady. She was screaming and weeping about her son and asking for help,” Sarhan Deab Abdul Moniem, an Iraqi traffic officer, testified. He showed jurors how she had cradled her dead son’s head on her shoulder. “I asked her to open up the door so I could help her. But she was paying attention only to her son.”

Other witnesses described a mother who pushed her daughter to safety, only to be killed herself. One man was pounded with bullets while he lay dying, unarmed, in the street. Another was shot while he had his hands up.

“I saw people huddled down in their cars, trying to shield their children with their bodies,” Adam Frost, a former Blackwater contractor, said in key testimony against his one-time colleagues.

“What happened on Sept. 16, 2007, was nothing short of an atrocity,” T. Patrick Martin, a federal prosecutor, said.

The Nisour Square shooting transformed Blackwater from America’s most prominent security contractor into a symbol of unchecked and privatized military power. The incident also became a notorious low point in the war, along with the massacre by Marines of 24 civilians at Haditha and the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

“The United States has shown that regardless of the nationality of the victims, it values justice for all,” Mr. Martin said. “Even when that means that the American who committed the crime must serve time.”

Lawyers for the guards apologized to Mr. Kinani and his family, saying that their son and the other victims were the sad consequences of urban warfare. “What happened here was a tragedy and to the extent I can apologize for anything, I do,” said Thomas G. Connolly, a lawyer for Mr. Slatten. “Nobody intended to kill your son.”

While the prosecution ends with the sentences, the legal case is sure to continue for years. The case raised many new legal issues, including whether State Department contractors are covered by American criminal law when operating overseas.

The 30-year sentences, while significant, could have been much longer. For using machine guns to commit violent crimes, they faced mandatory minimum 30-year sentences under a law passed during the crack cocaine epidemic. Prosecutors had wanted the judge to hand down sentences of 50 years or more.
 

A version of this article appears in print on April 14, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Blackwater Crew Given Long Terms for Killing Iraqis.

Ex-Blackwater Guards Given Long Terms for Killing Iraqis,
NYT, APRIL 13, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/us/ex-blackwater-guards-sentenced-to-prison-in-2007-killings-of-iraqi-civilians.html

Judge Orders Stop

to Detention of Families at Borders

 

FEB. 20, 2015

The New York Times

By JULIA PRESTON

A federal judge in Washington has ordered the Obama administration to stop its practice of detaining most women and children who were caught crossing the border illegally whether or not they had applied for asylum in the United States.

The ruling on Friday, by Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, invalidates a central piece of the administration’s strategy to curb illegal immigration across the Southwest border.

During the influx of migrants last summer, the Department of Homeland Security started holding most women who came with their children in detention centers in Texas and New Mexico, to discourage others in their home countries from embarking on an illegal passage to the United States. The women and children were detained even after they had asked for asylum and passed the initial test to prove their cases, showing they had credible fears of facing persecution if they were sent home. Their petitions for release were routinely denied.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh C. Johnson said the detention policy was devised to send a clear message to families in Central America, where most of the migrants were from: “If you come, it is likely you will be detained and sent back.”

A class-action lawsuit seeking to overturn the policy was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the immigration clinic at the University of Texas law school. In issuing a preliminary injunction, Judge Boasberg barred the administration from detaining migrants solely “for the purpose of deterring future immigration.” He ordered immigration authorities to consider each asylum case to determine if the migrants would present risks to public safety if they were released while their cases moved through the courts. Many of the women said they were fleeing severe criminal violence at home.

The authorities “will have to look at individual cases rather than making these broad stroke determinations that moms and children should be deprived of their liberty in order to discourage future migrants from coming to the U.S. border,” said Denise Gilman, a University of Texas law professor who helped bring the lawsuit.

The judge found that “liberty is the rule in the United States,” she said.

Homeland Security officials have been rapidly expanding detention facilities near the border, opening one center last year in Karnes, Tex., and another, planned to hold 2,400 people, in Dilley, Tex. More than 1,000 women and children are currently in detention.

Lawyers said they expected that women and children would start being released as early as next week.

“The court specifically rejected the government’s assertion that detention was necessary to protect national security,” said Lenni Benson, a professor at New York Law School.

The ruling finding that the administration has been too hard on border enforcement comes as the Obama administration is also battling a lawsuit by 26 states against the president’s executive actions to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation. The states accuse the administration of failing to aggressively enforce the immigration laws.
 

A version of this article appears in print on February 21, 2015, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Detention of Families at Borders Is Halted.

Judge Orders Stop to Detention of Families at Borders, NYT,
FEB. 20, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/21/us/judge-orders-stop-to-detention-of-families-at-borders.html

A Judge’s Assault on Immigration

FEB. 17, 2015

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

The Opinion Pages | Editorial

President Obama surely knew that his recent executive actions to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation would run into trouble as soon as a 26-state lawsuit opposing the actions landed on the desk of Federal District Judge Andrew Hanen, of Brownsville, Tex.

Judge Hanen — who last month invoked a biblical flood in describing illegal immigration into that community — has spoken out aggressively against Mr. Obama’s immigration policy in the past, saying it “endangers America” and is “an open invitation to the most dangerous criminals in society.” Indeed, his earlier opinions were the reason Republican governors and attorneys general pushed to get their suit into his district.

As expected, the judge on Monday night temporarily blocked the first of several programs Mr. Obama announced in November to offer work permits and a three-year reprieve from deportation to more than four million immigrants who are parents of American citizens and who have no criminal record.

That move — which Mr. Obama took only after years of failed efforts by Congress to pass any immigration reform — triggered the fury of congressional Republicans, who responded with threats of, among other things, impeachment proceedings.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas was so excited at Monday’s decision that he jumped on Twitter to say Mr. Obama’s amnesty order “has been ruled unconstitutional.”

No, it hasn’t.

What Judge Hanen did was to issue a preliminary injunction that prevents the executive action from going into effect until he can rule on the merits of the lawsuit itself, or until a higher court reverses him.

What he did not do was dispute the president’s broad authority to decide whom to deport, which is exactly what the Obama administration did in prioritizing the removal of immigrants who pose a threat to public safety or national security. Yet the judge blocked the action, which he called “a massive change in immigration practice.” On Tuesday, administration officials announced that they would delay the program, which was scheduled to begin this week, while they appealed the ruling.

To get to where he clearly wanted to go, Judge Hanen first had to find that the 26 plaintiff states have standing — that is, the legal capacity — to sue the administration over the new policy. He ruled that at least Texas did because the actions would force the state to spend scarce resources providing things like driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.

Judge Hanen said the costs were the result of the federal government’s “failure to secure the borders,” and he noted the millions of dollars that states spend to educate “each illegal alien child,” even though, as he knows, the Constitution already requires states to provide that education.

He danced around the fundamental point — as the Supreme Court reiterated as recently as 2012 — that setting immigration policy is the prerogative of the federal government, not the states. The judge also ruled that the states are likely to succeed on at least one of their underlying claims, which is that the White House did not follow proper administrative procedure, which requires certain executive actions to be preceded by a public notice and comment period.

However the appellate courts come down on the case, Mr. Obama is finding himself once again dealing with a familiar sort of Republican intransigence. With his humane and realistic immigration policy, he is trying to tackle a huge and long-running national problem: what to do with more than 11 million undocumented people who are living, working and raising families here, when the government cannot possibly apprehend or deport all of them. To the contrary, bringing some of these people out of the shadows of illegality would be an economic boon, as noted by the 12 states and more than 30 cities around the country (including Brownsville, Tex.) that are defending Mr. Obama’s actions.

On immigration, the Republicans seem to want only to savage the president’s efforts to address a pressing nationwide crisis, just as they have on health care reform. They are good at unleashing rage against Mr. Obama’s supposed lawlessness, but they have no meaningful solutions of their own.
 

A version of this editorial appears in print on February 18, 2015, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: A Judge’s Assault on Immigration.

A Judge’s Assault on Immigration, NYT,
FEB. 17, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/opinion/a-judges-assault-on-immigration.html

Obama Immigration Policy

Halted by Federal Judge in Texas

 

FEB. 17, 2015

The New York Times

By JULIA PRESTON

A federal judge in Texas has ordered a halt, at least temporarily, to President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, siding with Texas and 25 other states that filed a lawsuit opposing the initiatives.

In an order filed on Monday, the judge, Andrew S. Hanen of Federal District Court in Brownsville, prohibited the Obama administration from carrying out programs the president announced in November that would offer protection from deportation and work permits to as many as five million undocumented immigrants. The first of those programs was scheduled to start receiving applications on Wednesday.

Judge Hanen, an outspoken critic of the administration on immigration policy, found that the states had satisfied the minimum legal requirements to bring their lawsuit. He said the Obama administration had failed to comply with basic administrative procedures for putting such a sweeping program into effect.

The administration argued that Mr. Obama was well within long-established federal authority for a president to decide how to enforce the immigration laws. But Texas and the other states said the executive measures were an egregious case of government by fiat that would impose huge new costs on their budgets.

In ordering the administration to suspend the programs while he makes a final decision on the case, Judge Hanen agreed with the states that the president’s policies had already been costly for them.

“The court finds that the government’s failure to secure the border has exacerbated illegal immigration into this country,” Judge Hanen wrote. “Further, the record supports the finding that this lack of enforcement, combined with the country’s high rate of illegal immigration, significantly drains the states’ resources.”

Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, which is leading the states bringing the lawsuit, hailed the judge’s ruling as a “victory for the rule of law in America and a crucial first step in reining in President Obama’s lawlessness.” He said Mr. Obama’s actions were “an affront to everyone pursuing a life of freedom and opportunity in America the right way.”

Mr. Obama said he was using executive powers to focus enforcement agents on deporting serious criminals and those posing threats to national security. Three-year deportation deferrals and work permits were offered for undocumented immigrants who have not committed serious crimes, have been here at least five years and have children who are American citizens or legal residents.

As part of the package, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson also established new priorities, instructing enforcement agents to concentrate on deporting the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists and gang members, as well as migrants caught crossing the border illegally.

In his opinion, Judge Hanen accused administration officials of being “disingenuous” when they said the president’s initiatives did not significantly alter existing policies. He wrote that the programs were “a massive change in immigration practice” that would affect “the nation’s entire immigration scheme and the states who must bear the lion’s share of its consequences.” He said the executive actions had violated laws that the federal government must follow to issue new rules, and he determined “the states have clearly proven a likelihood of success on the merits.”

Since the lawsuit was filed on Dec. 3, the stark divisions over Mr. Obama’s sweeping actions have played out in filings in the case. Three senators and 65 House members, all Republicans, signed a legal brief opposing the president that was filed by the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative legal action organization.

Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, who is known for crackdowns on people living in the country illegally, also filed a brief supporting the states’ lawsuit. In December, a federal judge in Washington dismissed a separate lawsuit by Sheriff Arpaio seeking to stop the president’s actions.

On the other side, Washington and 11 other states as well as the District of Columbia weighed in supporting Mr. Obama, arguing that they would benefit from the increased wages and taxes that would result if illegal immigrant workers came out of the underground. The mayors of 33 cities, including New York and Los Angeles, and the Conference of Mayors also supported Mr. Obama.

“The strong entrepreneurial spirit of immigrants to the United States has significantly boosted local economies and local labor markets,” the mayors wrote in their filing.

Some legal scholars said any order by Judge Hanen to halt the president’s actions would be quickly suspended by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.

“Federal supremacy with respect to immigration matters makes the states a kind of interloper in disputes between the president and Congress,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard. “They don’t have any right of their own.”

The states’ lawsuit quotes Mr. Obama as saying many times in recent years that he did not have authority to take actions as broad as those he ultimately took. Mr. Tribe said that argument was not likely to pass muster with appeals court judges.

“All of that is interesting political rhetoric,” he said, “but it has nothing to do with whether the states have standing and nothing to do with the law.”

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.”

The case involved a Salvadoran immigrant with a long criminal record whom Judge Hanen had earlier sent to prison for five years. Instead of deporting the man after he served his sentence, an immigration judge in Los Angeles ordered him released, a decision Judge Hanen found “incredible.” Citing no specific evidence, he surmised that the administration had adopted a broader policy of releasing such criminals.

While acknowledging that he had no jurisdiction to alter policy, Judge Hanen said he relied on his “firsthand, in-the-trenches knowledge of the border situation” and “at least a measurable level of common sense” to reach his conclusions about the case.

“The court has never been opposed to accommodating those who come to this country yearning to be free, but this current policy only restricts the freedom of those who deserve it most while giving complete freedom to criminals who deserve it least,” he wrote.

The mayor of Brownsville, Tony Martinez, was among those who filed court papers supporting Mr. Obama’s actions. “We see a tremendous value in families staying together and being together,” Mr. Martinez said on a conference call on Tuesday organized by the White House. “Eventually we hope to get all these folks out of the shadows,” he said.

Obama Immigration Policy Halted by Federal Judge in Texas,
NYT, FEB 17, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/us/
obama-immigration-policy-halted-by-federal-judge-in-texas.html