See the update at the end of this post on the judge allowing Orly Taitz's suit to move forward–with major conditions.
ORIGINAL POST, AUG. 27, 6:31 A.M.: Rancho Santa Margarita lawyer/dentist/real-estate saleslady/Three Wishes Keks Orly Taitz is hailing a federal judge granting her motion to subpoena four Border Patrol agents to testify today in her “emergency” challenge to the U.S. government transporting undocumented immigrants from South Texas to California and other states.
But the Queen of the Birfers may have tipped off in a letter to the office of vehemently anti-immigrant Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) that she “shopped” for a Brownsville jurist most sensitive to her cause.
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Federal Judge Sets Hearing Date for Orly Taitz's Border-Crosser “Emergency Request”
U.S. District Court Judge Andrew S. Hanen earlier this month set a Wednesday hearing for Taitz's lawsuit, which seeks to have the undocumented deported immediately or quarantined for two months on grounds they rob American citizens of jobs, wages and benefits and expose them to crime and epidemics of infectious diseases, including at least one Taitz claims to have contracted while performing dental work on an illegal immigrant.
On OrlyTaitzEsq.com, Taitz posted a letter to Rohrabacher's Executive Assistant Kathleen Staunton that announced Hanen set the hearing date and urged that the news be spread to other like-minded Members of Congress.
“Judge Hanen is a judge, who previously excoriated the US government for acting as human smugglers,” Taitz mentions in the letter.
Shopping Taitz v. Johnson–as in Jeh Johnson, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, although Obama, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and the U.S. Border Patrol, Rio Grande Valley Sector, are also named as defendants–to Hanen would be unethical at best and illegal at worst.
On her site Monday, Taitz also proudly posted Hanen's document granting her motion to compel four officials with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection union local 1613 to appear at today's 1:30 p.m. hearing. They are: president James Harlan; vice president Chris Harris; media representative Gabriel Pacheco; and health and safety officer Ronald Zermeno.
Brownsville's Valley Morning Star reports each border agent is California-based. Hanen's order stated that it had been represented to him that none of the four objected to attending the hearing although it is not within 100 miles of where they reside, work or do business as federal rules limit.
UPDATE, AUG. 28, 10:54 A.M.: Federal Judge Andrew S. Hanen in Brownsville, Texas, on Wednesday allowed Orly Taitz's lawsuit to move forward, but that's about the only good news for the Rancho Santa Margarita lawyer/dentist/real-estate saleslady/nut-to-the-wing.
Suing the government over border crossers being transported out of South Texas to California and other states, Taitz was denied a restraining order against President Barack Obama, government agencies and various immigration practices.
And Hanen directed Taitz to come back by Oct. 3 with an amended, more narrowly focused complaint. Instead of suing over the threat to the public at large of the diseases, job losses and other problems undocumented people might bring, Taitz must show how she personally has been harmed, Hanen ruled.
“It's hard to determine what your causes of action are,” Hanen told Taitz at the onset of the hearing, according to a Valley Morning News report.
The judge also warned he would not entertain resurrections of the broad, original complaint, including issues Taitz had stated would rely on testimony from several U.S. Border Patrol agents,
“I'm telling you no right now,” Hanen told Taitz. “I'm not telling you no forever.”
The government was given until Oct. 17 to respond after Taitz files her amended complaint. An Oct. 29 injunction hearing was set.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.