A federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday blocked the Bush administration’s attempt to enlist the nation’s employers to banish illegal immigrants from the workplace, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Saying the administration’s plan “would result in irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers,” U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer barred authorities from threatening to prosecute businesses that fail to fire employees whose Social Security numbers don’t match government records.
Breyer’s preliminary injunction is likely to keep the proposal on hold until sometime next year.
Breyer said unions that challenged the administration’s proposal had raised serious questions about its legality and had shown that legal workers, and their employers, would suffer far greater hardship from immediate enforcement of the plan than the government would incur by a delay.
The injunction is binding until the case goes to trial, a proceeding that is many months away. But the administration is virtually certain to ask the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to overrule Breyer and let the new system take effect while it is being challenged. The court might act on such a request by the end of this year.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, whose agency issued the rule requiring employer notification, said the administration is considering an appeal.
