Next week, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in United States v. Texas, the case about Obama’s immigration executive actions.
As many legal analysts have noted, this case is based in politics and shouldn’t even be in the Courts. But, the Texas Attorney General — who is facing some big legal headaches of his own — filed the lawsuit with a judge who has been outspoken in his political views about immigration.
Law professor Anil Kalhan, who coined the term “judicial truthiness”, wrote in his definitive law review article on this case: “Like Judge Hanen’s earlier immigration-related opinions, therefore, Texas v. United States reads more like a document written to intervene in political debates than a judicial opinion carefully analyzing legal issues arising from DACA and DAPA.” and “To a striking extent, Judge Hanen engages those political debates in personal terms.”
Worth noting, Judge Hanen is also the judge of choice for “Birther Queen”/attorney/dentist Orly Taitz (herself a hard-core anti-immigrant advocate.) At a hearing on one of Taitz’s cases, Hanen even asked the government lawyer: “I can trust what the president says? . . . That’s a yes or no question.”
Now, we’d expect that from Steve “Cantaloupe Calves” King or Jeff Sessions. But, from a federal judge?
As the arguments approach, we thought one way to show Hanen’s animus would be to compare some of his statements to those of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.
So here’s a quiz: Who said it: Judge Hanen or Donald Trump?
1) “Since 1982, the population of illegal aliens in this country has more than tripled, but today’s situation is clearly exacerbated by the specter of terrorism and the increased need for security.”
2) “The Government intentionally allows known illegal aliens to enter and remain in the country.”
3) “If the human traffickers are successful, so much the better–mission accomplished. Even if their co-conspirators are unsuccessful, the Government will finish the job of the human traffickers–mission still accomplished.”
4) “It is clear that the failure of the Government to enforce the laws of this country is reaping what it sowed.”
5) “Those cartel leaders will seek, and are seeking, to live unfettered in the United States and no doubt to continue to run their criminal enterprises in both Mexico and the United States.”
6) “DHS should cease telling the citizens of the United States that it is enforcing our border security laws because it clearly is not.”
7) “Right now with the government the way it is, the buck never stops anywhere.”
(Answers: Hanen said all of the above — and, that we can even compare these two says so much about the political origins of the Texas case.)