Two Republican attorneys general, Florida’s Ashley Moody and Texas’s Ken Paxton, have launched a legal battle with the Biden administration over its parole-release program for migrants at the Southern border.
Both joined Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News to explain that the policy, which allows for the release on parole of some migrants into the interior without a court date, is illegal. At issue is a May 10 memo entitled Parole with Conditions in which CBP can release migrants on overcrowding grounds. Moody argued in a legal filing in federal court that that policy was similar to one already vacated in March entitled Parole Plus Alternatives to Detention Policy (Parole + ATD).
Judge T. Kent Wetherell, who declared the March policy unconstitutional, granted Florida’s new request for a temporary restraining order on Thursday. Wetherell explained he “fails to see a material difference” between the two immigration policies.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the ruling “sabotage” and Mayorkas himself weighed in on ABC on Sunday. “We think it’s a very harmful ruling when, in fact, our border patrol stations become overcrowded, it is a matter of the safety and security of people, including our own personnel, not just the vulnerable migrants, to be able to release them,” argued Mayorkas. The Biden administration has now appealed both rulings.
The Florida attorney general suggested there was something nefarious behind not appealing the March ruling until now. Moody argued that while the Title 42 protection was still in place, the Biden administration was “systematically breaking down our immigration-security structures,” saying DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asked for less detention capacity and less money.
“Think about the duplicity with what’s happening in the immigration matter. They waited until Title 42 expired to ask a federal judge to stay the [March] ruling that it was illegal to mass release all of these people. You have a federal judge yesterday that said it seems like Mayorkas may be untruthful here because they’ve waited so long to ask for a stay — meaning they wanted to wait until the last minute so it’s this emergency that they’ve created so they have to let everyone in. It’s almost like Mayorkas is Keyser Söze. He has this plan the whole time,” Moody explained.
“The way we hold these federal officials in check is Ken Paxton, myself, the other AGs around the country that are digging in, holding their feet to the fire, pushing back, and revealing their secret plans. We would never know about this [May 10 memo] if we weren’t in litigation right now,” Moody added.
Paxton thanked Moody for Florida’s effort and explained that “Texas is doing something very similar” to counter the policy. The state has filed suit on several administrative grounds, arguing the May 10 memo setting out the parole program is a substantive rule that was not issued through notice and comment, that DHS has exceeded its statutory authority, and that the policy is arbitrary and capricious.
“With this memo they put out on May 10 literally a day before this title 42 was going away…they were going to release people into the public and [the migrants] were supposed to provide their addresses and then report back in 60 days. Totally ludicrous. We have no way to track these people. They’re going to be released into the country. And it’s completely illegal,” Paxton explained.
During his Sunday appearance on ABC, Mayorkas was confronted with Wetherell’s response to Jean-Pierre’s “sabotage” comment. “This ignorant and dangerous rhetoric ignores the fact that the evidence presented in this case shows that the chaos that the president acknowledged has been going on at the southern border for a number of years, is largely a problem of the defendants’s, the administration’s, own making. If it is sabotage for a federal court to tell the federal government it must comply with the law, then so be it,” said Wetherell as quoted by ABC host Jon Karl.
“We respectfully disagree with the judge’s interpretation of the law, his characterization of our actions. And we intend to litigate the matter,” Mayorkas said in response.