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The Obama administration moved Monday to reverse a federal judges order in Texas that blocked a White House plan to shield up to 5 million immigrants from deportation.

In a court filing in Brownsville, Texas, the government urged U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen to lift his own injunction and allow President Obamas immigration initiatives to proceed. Those initiatives would offer immigrants in the country illegally the chance to apply for a three-year permit to stay and work on U.S. soil if they met certain criteria.

Leaving the injunction in place would work immense harm to the public interest by undermining efforts to encourage illegal aliens with significant ties to the community and no serious criminal record to come out of the shadows and to request the ability to work legally, the motion says.

The administration argued that Texas and 25 other states that sued the government had no legal standing to interfere in federal enforcement of immigration law.

Hanens ruling already has disrupted the governments effort to prepare for an expected onslaught of applications. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service had leased an office center in northern Virginia, and asked contractors to submit bids to supply records services by Monday.

That contract was canceled Friday, as the program ground to a halt.

Obama had invoked his executive authority when he announced the deportation waiver program in November, saying he was tired of waiting for Congress to reform the immigration system.

The 26 states challenged Obamas actions in court. Last week, hours before the application process was scheduled to start, Hanen issued an injunction that barred implementation of the programs, agreeing with the states that Obama had outstripped his constitutional powers.

The administration asked Hanen to stay his own order while the government appealed his ruling.

The largest part of the program, called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, would protect an estimated 4 million immigrants from deportation if they can prove they have lived in the U.S. for five years, or are parents of citizens or legal residents. Applicants with serious criminal records are not eligible.

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Obama administration seeks to block judge's immigration ruling

Designating the country's newest national monuments, President Barack Obama said Thursday that protecting places of natural beauty and historic significance is a truly American ideal.

Obama used the powers of the presidency to designate the Pullman National Monument in his hometown. The historic South Side neighborhood is where African-American railroad workers won a significant labor agreement in the 1930s that Obama said led to such protections as the 40-hour work week.

"So this site is at the heart of what would become America's labor movement," he said.

Pullman workers also played a role in the rise of the black middle class.

Obama began his career as a community organizer nearby and said returning to designate the monument "brings back a lot of good memories."

Before leaving Washington, Obama signed a proclamation in the Oval Office designating the Browns Canyon National Monument in Colorado, a 21,000-acre site along the Arkansas River popular for whitewater rafting. In Chicago, he also announced designation of the Honouliuli National Monument in Hawaii, the site of an internment camp where Japanese-American citizens and prisoners of war were held during World War II.

"Conservation is a truly American ideal," Obama said. "The naturalists and industrialists and politicians who dreamt up our system of public lands and waters did so in the hope that by keeping these places, these special places in trust, places of incomparable beauty, places where our history was written, then future generations would value those places the same way as we do."

Obama also announced a new program to provide fourth-graders and their families with free admission to national parks for a year.

The Pullman designation honors the neighborhood built by industrialist George Pullman in the 19th century for workers to manufacture luxurious railroad sleeping cars. The 203-acre Pullman site includes factories and buildings associated with the Pullman Palace Car Company, which was founded in 1867 and employed thousands of workers to construct and provide service on railroad cars. While the company employed a mostly white workforce to manufacture railroad passenger cars, it also hired former slaves to serve as porters, waiters and maids on its iconic sleeping cars.

The railroad industry -- Pullman in particular -- was one of the largest employers of African-Americans in the United States by the early 1900s. Pullman workers played a major role in the rise of the black middle class and, through a labor agreement won by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, they helped launch the civil rights movement of the 20th century, the White House said.

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Obama designates new national monuments

President Obama led the ceremony Saturday marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma, Ala., "Bloody Sunday" march, hailing the men and women who fought for civil rights in the 1960s but also declaring that more work needs to be done for race relations in the United States.

There are places, and moments in America, where this nations destiny has been decided," the president said. "Selma is such a place."

He spoke from the Edmund Pettus Bridge on which police, using clubs and tear gas, attacked civil rights demonstrators on March 7, 1965. The event is considered a watershed moment in the civil rights movement and helped lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

In one afternoon 50 years ago, so much of our turbulent history -- the stain of slavery and anguish of civil war; the yoke of segregation and tyranny of Jim Crow; the death of four little girls in Birmingham, and the dream of a Baptist preacher -- met on this bridge, Obama said, turning to Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who was present at the march. It is a rare honor in this life to follow one of your heroes.And John Lewis is one of my heroes.

Obama was joined by a delegation that included the first family, former President George W. Bush and roughly 100 members of Congress, including Lewis, who was seriously injured in the march. Members of the group, which also included former first lady Laura Bush, joined hands on stage after the president's speech.

Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Malia and Sasha, then walked about a third of the way across the bridge, accompanied by Lewis, who has given fellow lawmakers countless tours of this scene. Bush, his wife and scores of others came with them before a larger crowd followed.

"We have come to Selma to be reminded that we have do the work that justice and equality calls us to do," Lewis said.

Tens of thousands of others also attended the event. Congressional Republican leaders were absent from the event, but House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio released a statement.

"Today, 50 years after the Selma to Montgomery marches began, the House honors the brave foot soldiers who risked their lives to secure the blessings of liberty for all Americans," Boehner said.

Selma still struggles to overcome its legacy.

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Obama honors civil rights heroes in Selma - VIDEO: Obama honors civil rights heroes - JUAN WILLIAMS: 50 years after ...

President Barack Obama on Tuesday swiftly delivered on his vow to veto a Republican bill approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, leaving the long-debated project in limbo for another indefinite period.

The Senate received Obama's veto message and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately countered by announcing the Republican-led chamber would attempt to overturn the veto by March 3.

Obama rejected the bill hours after it was sent to the White House. Republicans passed the bill to increase pressure on Obama to approve the pipeline, a move the president said would bypass a State Department process that will determine whether the project is in the U.S. national interest.

"Through this bill, the United States Congress attempts to circumvent longstanding and proven processes for determining whether or not building and operating a cross-border pipeline serves the national interest," Obama wrote in his veto message.

Republicans, who support the project because of its job-creation potential, made passing a bill a top priority after gaining control of the U.S. Senate and strengthening their majority in the House of Representatives in November elections.

The bill passed by 270-152 in the House earlier this month and cleared the Senate in January. Despite their majority in the Senate, Republicans are four votes short of being able to override Obama's veto.

They have vowed to attach language approving the pipeline in a spending bill or other legislation later in the year that the president would find difficult to reject.

Obama has played down Keystone XL's ability to create jobs and raised questions about its effects on climate change. Environmentalists, who made up part of the coalition that elected the president in 2008 and 2012, oppose the project because of the carbon emissions involved in getting the oil it would carry out of Canadian tar sands.

TransCanada Corp's pipeline would carry 830,000 barrels a day of mostly Canadian oil sands petroleum to Nebraska en route to refineries and ports along the U.S. Gulf. It has been pending for more than six years. (Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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Obama Vetoes Keystone XL Pipeline Bill

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Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle

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U.S. President Barack Obama jokes with the audience while signing an executive order at Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Memorial Auditorium at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. on Friday, February 13, 2015.

U.S. President Barack Obama jokes with the audience while signing...

President Obama meets with business leaders and government officials at the Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford.

President Obama meets with business leaders and government...

Obama chats with Vicki Niu, a freshman computer science major at Stanford, while meeting with students at his appearance at Stanfords Memorial Auditorium.

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Obama calls for collaboration in cyberthreat battle