The Texas Attorney General is attuned to the news cycle as the rest of us.

This week came word that the Obama Administration had actually begun implementing his executive amnesty plan well before he claimed to. In fact, his administration claimed that the amnesty plan would not be implemented until mid-February.

A few days before the start of implementation, a federal judge in Texas issued an injunction against the implementation based on the Obama Administration’s claims on when implementation would begin. It is clear now that the Obama Administration misrepresented the start date and had already begun implementing his plans before the court’s injunction.

This morning, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a “Motion for Early Discovery.” The motion requests the court grant Texas permission to start delving into the implementation of Expanded DACA to date.”

From the Attorney General’s motion:

This newly disclosed conduct is difficult to square with Defendants’ prior representation to the Court that “nothing is going to happen” until weeks after the preliminary- injunction hearing. Likewise, Plaintiffs do not understand why Defendants do not consider their implementation of Expanded DACA to be “granting” or “entertaining requests” for deferred action under the challenged DHS Directive. After all, Original DACA provided only for two year relief; it is only Expanded DACA that provided for the three-year relief that Defendants granted to 100,000 aliens. Moreover, Defendants’ advisory contains no details about how many of the aliens who received Expanded DACA relief applied for some form of DACA during the time period at issue, or the extent to which those applicants formally or informally requested or were told they would receive Expanded DACA relief.

Given the representations made by the Obama Administration to the District Court, they are probably going to be in a world of hurt. In fact, Texas makes sure to quote the exchange between the Obama Administration’s lawyer and the judge:

THE COURT: But as far as you know, nothing is going to happen in the next three weeks?
MS. HARTNETT: No, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Okay. On either.
MS. HARTNETT: In terms of accepting applications or granting any up or down applications.
THE COURT: Okay.
MS. HARTNETT: For revised DACA, just to be totally clear.

And also:

MS. HARTNETT: In that document [Defendants’ January 14 motion for extension of time] we reiterated that no applications for the revised DACA — this is not even DAPA — revised DACA would be accepted until the 18th of February, and that no action would be taken on any of those applications until March the 4th.

This is going to become a bigger story given the Obama Administration’s representations in court.

UPDATED: Ken Paxton’s Office just sent out this press release.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office today filed a motion for discovery after the Obama Administration admitted that tens of thousands of expanded work permits have already been issued to illegal immigrants, in contradiction to the facts the administration presented in U.S. federal court.

“In an apparent attempt to quickly execute President Obama’s unlawful, unconstitutional amnesty plan, the Obama Administration appears to have already been issuing expanded work permits, in direct contradiction to what they told a federal judge previously in this litigation,” said General Paxton. “The circumstances behind this must be investigated, and the motion we seek would help us determine to what extent the Administration might have misrepresented the facts in this case.”

The federal district court granted a preliminary injunction on February 16, enjoining in full President Barack Obama’s executive action.

Texas leads a 26-state bipartisan coalition fighting the President’s attempt to unilaterally grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. Joining Texas in the lawsuit are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin.