“On May 19, Judge Andrew Hanen of the of the Southern District of Texas issued an order imposing sanctions on the Justice Department and its lawyers for unethical conduct, which included repeatedly lying to him in court.
U.S. v. Texas is the immigration lawsuit filed by 26 states against the Obama administration over its plan to provide deferrals, work permits, and other government benefits to almost 5 million illegal aliens. Hanen issued a preliminary injunction in February 2015 preventing implementation of the plan.
His decision was upheld by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and the case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.
But Hanen issued his sanction order because of the misbehavior of Justice Department lawyers when the case was before him. He severely rebuked the DOJ for claiming that the president’s plan was not being implemented prior to his issuing his injunction order when the government knew that it was being implemented—to the tune of over 100,000 aliens. When he found out, he ordered the government to reverse its behavior and void these deferrals.
Amongst the sanctions Hanen ordered on May 19 was yearly ethics training for five years for every DOJ lawyer stationed in Washington who appear in any of the courts of the states who filed the lawsuit. He also ordered the Department of Homeland Security to provide him (under seal) with a list of all of the aliens who had been given benefits under the amnesty plan in violation of his injunction.
However, on May 31, the Justice Department filed a motion with Hanen asking him to stay (or suspend) his sanctions order while DOJ appeals his decision to the 5th Circuit.
http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content...ns-5-31-16.pdf
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The strangest claim made by the Justice Department is that Hanen’s order to produce a state-by-state list of all of the illegal aliens unlawfully granted deferrals would “breach the confidence of these individuals (and of others who submit information to USCIS) in the privacy of such records.”
An affidavit filed by León Rodriguez, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at the Department of Homeland Security, claims this would violate the internal privacy policy of DHS even though he admits the federal Privacy Act “does not apply to non-U.S. persons.”