Typically if an outsider sues a government agency, the agency grinds its collective teeth and prepares to defend its actions.
But we learned this week of the settlement of a court case with a different angle. The agency (the Department of Homeland Security) must have been delighted to settle a federal case filed against it in the Central District of California.
You see, the other side sued to make it possible for a class of illegal aliens, about to be deported, to get employment authorization documents (EADs) while their cases drag through the courts.
The whole, widely promoted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is designed to give what is nominally a short-term legal status, with the right to work, to a somewhat comparable population — illegal aliens seeking to have their potential deportations quashed through "deferred action". DACA recipients also can get EADs while they stay in the nation in a momentarily legal status.
The group of illegals who settled the California case (it is called Dayo et al. v. Napolitano) are probably a less attractive group than the potential DACA beneficiaries in that Dayo and colleagues had already been hauled into deportation proceeding by the authorities, while most of the DACA types are just worried that they might (justifiably) be facing deportation.
In any event, DHS has announced the Dayo settlement, which amounts to a total surrender to the immigration lawyers on the other side — yes, the about-to-be deportees can get their EADs while their cases continue in the clogged immigration courts.
It is just another nibble, another narrowly defined group of illegal aliens, who are getting the right to work in the United States rather than a one-way plane ticket to somewhere else thanks to the looseness of U.S. law and the tolerance for alien law-breakers that characterizes this administration.