WASHINGTON — There’s a man who might avert a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, and he’s not even in Washington.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen of Brownsville, Texas, is expected to issue a ruling soon on an injunction requested by 26 states to prevent the Obama administration from going forward with recent executive actions on immigration as their lawsuit goes through the courts.
Should he rule with the states in favor of an injunction, some Republicans in Congress say it could break the impasse on funding DHS, which is currently at a standstill despite a nearing Feb. 27 deadline.
The Republicans said it could be a game-changer, but they don’t quite agree on how. Some said it might make them open to a bill to fund DHS without immigration measures, while others said that it would convince Senate Democrats to get on board with their bill to gut Obama’s policies.
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Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), one of the biggest opponents of the executive actions in the upper chamber, took a similar view when asked if an injunction would change anything for the DHS funding impasse.
“I think it would have a huge impact,” he told HuffPost. “I would think it would be further proof that the president overreached and shouldn’t be funded, and it would cause the Democrats to re-evaluate their obstruction.”
