Before a federal judge clamped down on the flood, it appears that a massive number of people were approved for amnesty and others were given a two or three year extension for freedom from deportation and associated benefits under the original 2012 order. That’s quite the volume, given the limited amount of time and the circumstances. One can only imagine how many would have been processed by now without a stay on the process. Still, the government is fighting tooth and claw.

The administration processed about 100,000 applications for amnesty for so-called Dreamers under some of the expanded rules President Obama announced last year, lawyers told a Texas judge late Tuesday, in a move that could complicate their claim that they have halted all action under the amnesty.

Mr. Obama’s Nov. 20 announcement offered a number of different benefits to illegal immigrants, including expanding eligibility for his 2012 amnesty for Dreamers and boosting the amount of time he was granting an amnesty form deportation and permits for legal work from two years to three years.

While the administration hadn’t begun collecting applications under the expanded eligibility, it had awarded tens of thousands of three-year permits to applicants who had qualified as Dreamers under the original rules from 2012.

At issue now is the question of whether or not all of the two and three year extensions which were offered to the illegal aliens are subject to being reeled back in. The Obama administration took some preemptive action this week and sent a letter to the judge which essentially says they can’t understand why anyone would want them to do that.

“It is defendants’ understanding that the preliminary injunction does not require them to take affirmative steps to alter the status quo as it existed before the court’s order,” the administration told Judge Hanen. “For this reason, defendants do not understand the order to require defendants to take affirmative steps to revoke three-year periods of deferred action and work authorization.”

“Defendants Do Not Understand” could really be the title of a great book about this entire, sorry affair. Possibly a TV miniseries too. But the slow – or possibly nonexistent – response by the administration to the judge’s orders raises yet another serious, constitutional question. What if they just refuse to do it? Now that we are in the two year era of Obama Unleashed, with no further elections to worry about, this White House has made it fairly clear that they’re willing to go it alone, even when they do things which were previously acknowledged as being outside their authority. If the judge says the extensions must be cancelled, but Obama orders DHS to simply sit on their hands, what can really be done? Short of waiting for a new president to hopefully restock the cabinet and tidy up the mess, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of recourse available.

Oh… what am I fretting about? The next president won’t do anything differently anyway. Next up… several fascinating posts about raising horseradish. (Since, as I was saying to Ed last night on Twitter, it apparently doesn’t really matter who we elect anymore anyway.)