A federal judge late Monday halted President Obama’s deportation amnesty, ruling he overstepped his powers in trying to grant legal status and “benefits and privileges” to millions of illegal immigrants, in a stunning decision that chides the president and throws the White House’s plans into disarray just a day before applications were to be accepted. The White House said it will appeal Judge Andrew S. Hanen’s decision, but it’s unclear whether the case could reach the circuit court in New Orleans or even the Supreme Court before Wednesday, which is when the Homeland Security Department had planned to begin accepting the first applications under the new amnesty. “The DHS was not given any ‘discretion by law’ to give 4.3 million removable aliens what the DHS itself labels as ‘legal presence,’” Judge Hanen wrote in issuing an injunction. “In fact, the law mandates that these illegally-present individuals be removed. The DHS has adopted a new rule that substantially changes both the status and employability of millions. These changes go beyond mere enforcement or even non-enforcement of this nation’s immigration scheme.” [Federal Judge Halts Obama Amnesty; White House to Appeal, by Stephen Dinan, Washington Times, February 17, 2015]

Safe to say that the President did not see this coming.Needless to say, a President who has already violated the law is not going to be stopped by a judge issuing a ruling. But the ruling will stiffen the spine of Republicans to stand against Obama's Unilateral Amnesty and draw more attention to an issue that the Administration was obviously trying to present as a fait accompli.

Speaker John Boehner is using the ruling to dig in his heels on the upcoming showdown of funding the Department of Homeland Security.