Department of Justice legalized 100,000 illegals by executive action before Texas court injunction

The Department of Justice admitted in a court filing that it legalized 100,000 illegals by executive action from November 20, 2014 until February 16, 2015 before a Texas federal judge blocked President Obama's executive immigration action. The DOJ said that it started issuing three-year work permits "to approximately 100,000 individuals" who signed up for the 2012 DACA program "out of an abundance of caution."

"Defendants nevertheless recognize that their identification of February 18, 2015, as the date by which USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) planned to accept requests for deferred action under the new and expanded DACA eligibility guidelines, and their identification of March 4, 2015 as the earliest date by which USCIS would make final decisions on such expanded DACA requests, may have led to confusion about when USCIS had begun providing three-year terms of deferred action to individuals already eligible for deferred action under 2012 DACA.

"In light of these circumstances, Defendants file this Advisory to ensure that the Court is aware of these pre-injunction actions taken by USCIS.

"It is Defendants’ understanding that the preliminary injunction does not require them to take affirmative steps to alter the status quo as it existed before the Court’s Order...For this reason, Defendants do not understand the Order to require Defendants to take affirmative steps to revoke three-year periods of deferred action and work authorization...that were issued for recipients of deferred action under the original 2012 DACA eligibility guidelines prior to the Court’s February 16, 2015 Order.

"Defendants nevertheless provide this Advisory to ensure that the Court is fully aware of Defendants’ pre-injunction actions, in light of any potential confusion from the intersection of the (injunction), the 2012 DACA guidelines that remain in place, and Defendants’ statements about when grants of DACA under the revised eligibility guidelines would begin taking place," the DOJ said in a March 3 "Advisory" to the federal court in Brownsville, Texas.