This is a follow-up to an ongoing issue within the Obama illegal alien executive action. Backstory HERE.

(Via Fox News) A federal judge sharply scolded a Justice Department attorney at a hearing on President Obama’s immigration executive actions, suggesting that the administration misled him on a key part of the program — and that he fell for it, “like an idiot.”

The testy court hearing was held Thursday in Texas by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen. The judge suggested he could order sanctions against the administration if he finds they indeed misrepresented the facts.

At issue is whether the DOJ misled the judge into believing that a plank of the Obama program — giving deportation reprieves to thousands of young illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children — would not go forward before he made a ruling on a request to halt it. In fact, federal officials had given more than 108,000 people three-year reprieves before that date and granted them work permits under the program.

Obama’s executive actions would spare from deportation as many as 5 million people who are in the U.S. illegally. Many Republicans oppose the actions, saying only Congress has the right to take such sweeping action. Twenty-six states led by Texas joined together to challenge them as unconstitutional. Hanen on Feb. 16 sided with the states, issuing a preliminary injunction blocking Obama’s actions.

Hanen chided Justice Department attorney Kathleen Hartnett for telling him at a January hearing before the injunction was issued that nothing would be happening with regard to one key part of Obama’s actions, an expansion of the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, until Feb. 18.

“Like an idiot I believed that,” Hanen said.

A flustered Hartnett repeatedly apologized to Hanen for any confusion related to how the reprieves and work permits were granted. (continue reading)

The flaw which will deconstruct the Obama Executive Action is a simple one for Hanen to rule upon.   If all Obama was doing is “not deporting” people (ergo he’s using his executive authority of prosecutorial discretion), and that’s the claim of those who say this is constitutional, how or what part of ‘non-deportation’ includes granting “work/employment authorization”?

Work and Employment eligibility, and the qualifications for allowable status of permission therein, is federal law.

If Obama is claiming he can provide legal work authorization, though an executive action, he is absolutely creating a new law. Such a decree clearly violates the separation of powers within the constitution.

If not deporting illegal aliens is constitutionally allowable under the auspices of executive branch prosecutorial discretion, you might win the argument.

However, if President Obama thinks he can arbitrarily grant a new status of legal employment eligibility, he’s grossly mistaken. That would be making new employment law from the executive branch.

This, in my opinion is where he went too far. To put that employment eligibility construct in the executive action, and giving such an instruction to DHS head Jeh Johnson, any court challenge raised in that regard would most certainly see the over extension of executive authority. – Obama Will Lose !