White House will seek emergency order to pursue immigration plan

On Friday, the White House announced that Justice Department lawyers will ask an appeals court for an emergency order to continue its immigration plan.

The stay would allow the government to continue issuing work permits and to "provide legal protections to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants while it appeals a judge's ruling halting the programs," The New York Times reports.

The government wants to continue the programs until an appeals court reviews U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen's ruling on Monday night, which indefinitely postponed President Obama's executive action on immigration. White House officials said the Justice Department will file the stay at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans by Monday.

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"We believe that when you evaluate the legal merits of the arguments, that there is a solid legal foundation for the president to take the steps that he announced late last year to reform our broken immigration system," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement.