The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] on Tuesday challenged [motion, PDF] a federal judge’s order requiring DOJ lawyers to attend ethics classes. Judge Andrew Hanen [official website] of the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas [official website] ordered [JURIST report] government attorneys to take ethics classes after he accused them of misleading him in a legal challenge to President Barack Obama’s amnesty orders. He accused the attorneys of being “intentionally deceptive.” The judge claimed [SCOTUSBlog report] that DOJ attorneys knew that the Obama administration was approving amnesty applications but actively hid that evidence from both him and the 26 states that sued to stop the amnesty. Furthermore, he claimed that after the Obama administration had been ordered to stop, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) [official website] had continued to approve thousands of application.The DOJ argued [Washington Times report] that his order exceeds his authority and is far too costly to enforce such training.

The case at issue has been taken up [JURIST report] by the US Supreme Court. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the injunction against the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) [materials, PDF] policy last May, a month after Hanen declined to lift [JURIST reports] the stay he imposed in February. In March of last year the DOJ urged [JURIST report] the Fifth Circuit to reverse the injunction blocking the president’s immigration executive action. In November 2014 Obama announced two new immigration programs [text], purportedly under his executive authority as president. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the DAPA would lift the threat of deportation for about 4.7 million undocumented residents by allowing immigrants that have been in the US for more than five years or have children who are citizens to register and pass a criminal background check in order to stay in the country.