Because Border Patrol is following Johnson’s directives, agents are still adhering to the controversial expansion of prosecutorial discretion at the border. And, as Patrick Brennan previously noted, the federal judge’s ruling did not block other actions Obama has taken to change immigration policy.

The DHS-funding bill that passed the House earlier this year would do more than the injunction to defang Obama’s executive actions on immigration. But Senate Democrats have thus far prevented that bill from reaching the president’s desk, and are using a filibuster to threaten a DHS shutdown at the end of February.

Earlier this week, Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, the Republican chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, warned his colleagues about how relying on the courts to stop executive amnesty could be a potentially ruinous decision.