Freedom Line Blog

Just days after the California DMV announced it might use the Obama Administration’s “deferred action” program to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, a group of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are suing to kill it.

From Huffington Post:

Arizona immigration law author and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is representing 10 immigration agents in a lawsuit filed Thursday against Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, for policies they say prevent them from doing their job of defending the Constitution.

“They’re being ordered by their federal-appointee superiors to break federal law, or if they don’t break federal law, according to their orders they will be disciplined,” Kobach said Thursday on a call with reporters. “This is an absolutely breath-taking assertion of authority and an abuse of authority.”

The complaint’s six causes of action give you a flavor of what Kobach means:

1. The Directive Expressly Violates Federal Statutes Requiring the Initiation of Removals
2. The Directive Violates Federal Law By Conferring a Non-Statutory Form of Benefit, Deferred Action, to More than 1.7 Million Aliens, Rather Than a Form of Relief or Benefit that Federal Law Permits on Such a Large Scale
3. The Directive Violates Federal Law by Conferring the Legal Benefit of Employment Authorization Without Any Statutory Basis and Under the False Pretense of “Prosecutorial Discretion”
4. The Directive Violates the Constitutional Allocation of Legislative Power to Congress
5. The Directive Violates the Article II, Section 3, Constitutional Obligation of the Executive to Take Care That the Laws Are Faithfully Executed
6. The Directive Violates the Administrative Procedure Act Through Conferral of a Benefit Without Regulatory Implementation