Twenty states and a Trump-aligned legal group have sued the Biden administration over its plans to expand a “parole” program that would allow a total of 120,000 immigrants from four countries to apply for admission from home and be admitted into the United States every month.
Texas and the American First Legal group led a lawsuit that was filed Tuesday against the Department of Homeland Security in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. The legal action states that the White House’s recently announced parole change was illegal because it circumvented Congress, the only body allowed to determine immigration levels, according to the Constitution.
“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS or Department), under the false pretense of preventing aliens from unlawfully crossing the border between the ports of entry, has effectively created a new visa program — without the formalities of legislation from Congress—by announcing that it will permit up to 360,000 aliens annually from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to be ‘paroled’ into the United States for two years or longer and with eligibility for employment authorization,” the lawsuit states.
BIDEN’S NEW BORDER STRATEGY ‘SIGNIFICANTLY’ DETERRING ILLEGAL MIGRATION: MAYORKAS
AFL President Stephen Miller, previously a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, described it as a “dramatic escalation in the open-borders crusade.”
“[Biden] is now going to foreign countries to pre-approve innumerable illegal aliens to flood into our country without any legal basis whatsoever,” said Miller. “It is illegal, unconstitutional, and contemptible.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told hundreds of mayors gathered in Washington for the U.S. Conference of Mayors last week that the Biden administration’s requirement that immigrants from top-sending countries seek appointments with U.S. officials rather than entering illegally was bearing results with fewer people being arrested for illegally crossing.
“Two weeks ago, we announced new lawful pathways for noncitizens seeking relief in the United States, accompanied by a consequence regime for those who do not avail themselves of those processes,” Mayorkas said during a speech last Thursday. “Since then, encounters from the targeted countries dropped significantly.”
Since Biden took office two years ago, 5.2 million people have been encountered at the nation’s borders attempting to enter the country without authorization, most of whom came over the land border without permission, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
More than 1.5 million people were released from federal custody and allowed to remain and live in the United States to await court hearings years down the road.
The launch of the CBP One app this month focused on deterring citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, who have been the drivers in the migration surge across the Western Hemisphere through the pandemic. Citizens of those four countries are not able to be flown back by the U.S. government because the receiving governments will not accept their citizens back.
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The other states that signed on to the lawsuit are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
