The attorney general of Arizona filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration arguing that the immigration policies it has initiated break environmental law.
Mark Brnovich filed the suit on Monday in the U.S. District Court of Arizona alleging that Biden’s decision to halt the border wall construction and the “Remain in Mexico” policy violates the National Environmental Policy Act. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Troy Miller, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tae Johnson were named as defendants in the suit.
The act, which was signed into law on Jan. 1, 1970, requires federal agencies to assess the environmental impacts their proposals could have before making decisions.
The suit accuses the administration of having “embarked on multiple environmentally disruptive policies without performing even cursory environmental analysis.”
“It’s the pinnacle of hypocrisy for the Biden Administration to claim it wants to protect our environment, while not enforcing federal statutes that are specifically designed for that purpose,” Brnovich said in a statement announcing the suit. “We’re not going to sit idly by as the Biden Administration ignores real harms to our state resulting from its heavy-handed executive orders.”
The plaintiffs are looking to get the judge to rule that the government did violate the act and want the judge to award them the cost of legal fees. Additionally, the attorney general wants the judge to rule that the defendants need to “secure the border in Arizona to the satisfaction of this Court to prevent additional unlawful migration.”
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A spokesperson for CBP told the Washington Examiner it does not comment on pending litigation, while the DHS and ICE did not return a request for comment.
There has been a surge of migrants reaching the southern border in recent months. Critics of the Biden administration have highlighted his reversal of the Trump-originated “Remain in Mexico” policy as one of the causes of the influx. More than 172,000 people attempted to come across the border from Mexico illegally in March, marking the highest monthly total in 15 years and five times greater than the amount seen last March at the start of the coronavirus.
