How Judge Hanen was able to rule against President Obama’s immigration program

He redefined non-enforcement of law (which is generally discretionary and non-reviewable) as the conferral of a benefit, namely, “three years of immunity from [the] law” and “legal presence status” (p. 87). While the president can underenforce statutes based on his constitutional authority, he can’t confer these “things,” these benefits, on unauthorized aliens without statutory authority.

But there are no such things. The beneficiaries of the program do not receive “immunity” in a legal sense because the president can change his mind and prosecute or deport them. “Legal presence status” similarly just means non-enforcement.

The grain of truth in Judge Hanen’s opinion is that “legal presence status” does typically trigger a right to a driver’s license under state law. That is a benefit. The government replies that states could refuse to issue driver’s licenses to aliens who are legally present under the program. The judge is (I think, rightly) skeptical of this argument. But he is rightly skeptical only because the Supreme Court has held that the president’s non-enforcement decisions in the area of immigration take precedence over state law. Which gets us back to where we started: legally speaking, the program is a non-enforcement program, unreviewable for that reason.