Texas judge blasts Justice Department lawyers, orders ethics training

BROWNSVILLE, Texas, May 20 (UPI) -- A federal judge in Texas has ordered hundreds of U.S. Department of Justice lawyers to have ethics training after blasting the agency for its behavior.

At the center of the storm is Judge Andrew Hanen of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, who sided with his state and 25 other mostly conservative states to block President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration in 2015.

He said Justice Department lawyers intentionally misled him while the immigration case was before him in its early stages and accused them of a "calculated plan of unethical conduct."

Hanen, a George W. Bush appointee who sits in Brownsville, issued an order on Thursday imposing a number of sanctions on administration lawyers for "misrepresentations" he says they made.

He said both he and opposing counsel were assured that the government would not start implementing an expansion of a program called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals until February 18, 2015.

But the government implemented a part of the program before February and the Department of Homeland Security had already granted relief under the immigration programs to more than 100,000 undocumented immigrants while the programs were being challenged in court.

Hanen accused DOJ lawyers of deliberately hiding the facts from him.

These "misstatements," he said, misled him and the 26 states that sued the government over its implementation of Obama's plan to defer deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants.

"Clearly, there seems to be a lack of knowledge about or adherence to the duties of professional responsibility in the halls of the Justice Department," Hanen wrote. He also said his court "would be remiss if it left such unseemly and unprofessional conduct unaddressed."

"Such conduct is certainly not worthy of any department whose name includes the word 'Justice,'" he wrote. "Suffice it to say, the citizens of all fifty states, their counsel, the affected aliens and the judiciary all deserve better."

The judge then issued an order that government lawyers who plan to participate in court cases in any of the 26 states involved in the ongoing litigation must complete three hours of ethics training annually -- a requirement he said "should not be too cumbersome."

Hanen also asked Attorney General Loretta Lynch to designate someone to ensure compliance with this edict and to submit annual reports letting him know this is being done. And he asked her to inform him within 60 days about whether the department's Office of Professional Responsibility is doing its job properly.

Hanen also demanded that the Justice Department provide him with a list of all the undocumented immigrants who received deferred action from deportation.

"The department strongly disagrees with the order" Justice Department spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said.

"This is the latest of a long line of outrageous, outsized orders from this court, all of which inflict real, lasting harm on Dreamers and families," said Karen Tumlin, Legal Director of the National Immigration Law Center." We urge the Department of Justice to take all necessary steps to protect Dreamers and their families in light of this latest order," she said.

A final decision on the case is expected to be made by the U.S Supreme Court before the end of June.

It's not the first time Hanen has acted controversially in the case. His decision to issue a national injunction against the programs in February 2015 was roundly criticized in legal circles for going beyond the power of what a lower court can do.