This is unbelievable. In Texas v. United States (in which I filed a brief), the government has now admitted to the court in an “advisory” that 2,000 additional aliens were given three-year work authorization *AFTER* the court’s injunction. Recall that they have previously told the court that nothing under the November 20 memorandum had gone into effect.

Defendants file this Advisory to apprise the Court of information that came to the attention of Department of Justice counsel yesterday, May 6, 2015, concerning the Department of Homeland Security’s (“DHS”) compliance with the Court’s February 16, 2015 preliminary injunction. Specifically, and as described further below, United States Citizen and Immigration Services (“USCIS”), while preparing notifications to a small number of individuals who had erroneously been given three-year terms of work authorization after the issuance of the injunction, discovered that another group of approximately 2000 individuals had been erroneously sent three-year work authorizations after the Court had issued its injunction. The Government sincerely regrets these circumstances and is taking immediate steps to remedy these erroneous three-year terms.

Oh, and this filing came Friday night at 11:58 p.m. CT. Texas’s reply is due on Monday, May 11. The government graciously consents to granting an extension–so this case can stretch out even longer.

The Government sincerely regrets these circumstances and is taking prompt corrective steps, while gathering additional information about these issues, including how these errors occurred. The Government will supplement this Advisory with additional details as soon as they are available, and by no later than May 15, 2015.

To the extent Plaintiffs believe additional time is necessary to respond to the Court’s Order of April 7, 2015, in light of this information and the current May 11, 2015 due date for their submission, Defendants would consent to granting Plaintiffs such relief.

If Judge Hanen was on the fence about issuing sanctions, I can’t imagine this will make his decision any tougher.

This does not bode well for the competence of DHS to actually assess applications on a case-by-case basis. They are still rubber-stamping these work authorizations, even though a court order said not to. What a mess.