The federal judge selected to rule on a pending multi-state lawsuit over President Barack Obama's executive action on immigration reform has already been critical of the president's immigration policy.

In December 2013, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen for the Southern District of Texas wrote a critical 10-page opinion in several immigration smuggling cases. It concerned four cases in which children arrived in the U.S. illegally alone and were reunited with a parent also in the country illegally.  

"Department of Homeland Security has simple chosen not to enforce the United States' border security laws," the judge wrote. He said the government's failure to enforce immigration laws was "both dangerous and unconscionable."

Judge Hanen said the DHS should be arresting parents living in the U.S. illegally, although the president's policy at the time was to reunite children with family members while deportation proceedings proceeded. This was to circumvent a previous policy of holding people in detention for prolonged periods while waiting for hearings.

Judge Hanen also wrote, however, that the court took no position on the topic of immigration reform, and not to read his opinion as a commentary on that issue. 

His opinion was issued well before over 68,000 unaccompanied children arrived at the U.S. border this past summer, mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras. 

Judge Hanen was assigned the multi-state case suing President Obama through an automated court system; he is one of two federal judges in the Southern District of Texas.

Texas is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit with 16 other states suing the Obama Administration for what they claim are violations of the U.S. Constitution. The states include Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, the Carolinas, South Dakota, among others.

Texas governor-elect Greg Abbott, a Republican, seeks to have the executive order declared illegal, but seeks no monetary damages.

"The President is abdicating his responsibility to faithfully enforce laws that were duly enacted by Congress, and attempting to rewrite immigration laws, which he has no authority to do," Abbott, who is currently Texas' attorney general, said in a statement Dec. 3.

The White House has said the executive order falls within presidential powers, and has argued that the ultimate answer is for Congress to pass meaningful immigration reform. Immigration reform will enable millions of immigrants to apply for permission to stay in the U.S. for up to three years and get a work permit.

This is the 31st time Abbott has sued the federal government since Obama came to the White House in 2009.