Federal Appeals Court Responds to Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Over Immigration

A legal challenge to President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration faced a big hurdle at a federal appeals court Monday: the judges could not seem to figure out what good it would do the plaintiff if he won the case.
Three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit spent a little over an hour hearing arguments on a lawsuit brought by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, of Maricopa County, who contends his jail is spending millions of dollars to house illegal immigrants Obama is refusing to deport under “deferred action” policies that offer a quasi-legal status to some who came to the country illegally as children.
However, all three judges seemed dubious that ruling those programs illegal would do anything to alleviate the flow of prisoners into Arpaio’s custody or to force Obama to deport people who are already there.
Even a worst-case outcome for the government at the D.C. Circuit on the current appeal would be unlikely to result in an immediate ruling that Obama’s deferred action programs are illegal. If the court rules for Arpaio, the case would likely return to the district court to be developed further.