In the first legal challenge to the Biden government’s immigration agenda, a Texas federal judge temporarily blocked a 100-day break from deportations.
The US District Court for the Southern District of Texas on Tuesday issued a nationwide temporary 14-day restraining order requested by the state attorney general that would prevent the policy from being enforced, which was issued by the Department of Homeland Security hours after President Biden took office. The order will remain in effect until the judge considers a broader injunction request.
The judge, Drew B. Tipton, who was appointed by former President Donald J. Trump, said in his decision that suspending deportations would violate a provision of immigration status, as well as another law that required agencies to provide a rational explanation for your political decisions.
The immigration law states that people with final removal orders from the United States must be deported within 90 days. The court found that the 100-day break breached that requirement and that the mandatory language of immigration law should not be “neutralized by the broad discretion of the federal government”.
The court also found that the agency’s memorandum violated a separate law that required agencies to provide a logical and rational reason for their policy changes. The judge determined that the Department of Homeland Security was in conflict with the Administrative Procedure Law because it did not provide adequate justification for temporarily suspending deportations.
Immediately after taking office, Biden began to dismantle some of his predecessor’s initiatives aimed at curbing legal and illegal immigration to the United States. The president issued a series of executive orders, including one to lift a travel ban that targeted Muslim-majority countries.
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Immigration advocates challenged many of Trump’s policies in federal court, and Judge Tipton’s decision on Tuesday signaled that immigration hawks may also sue to thwart Biden’s initiatives.
“The court order shows the difficult battle that President Biden has in trying to reverse the immigration restrictions of the previous government,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, immigration lawyer and professor at Cornell Law School. “A single judge can interrupt a federal agency’s effort to review and redefine the priority of its immigration policies.”
Following the decision on Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Twitter that was a victory against the left.
“Texas is the FIRST state in the country to file a lawsuit against administrator Biden. AND WE WON, ”wrote Paxton, a Republican, who is under federal investigation on charges of bribery and abuse of power raised by former advisers.
“Within 6 days of Biden’s tenure, Texas STOPped his freeze on illegal deportations,” wrote Paxton. “This was a seditious uprising on the left. And my team and I stopped. “
On a Letter last week, for David Pekoske, the interim secretary of homeland security, Paxton called the plan “a total abdication of the Department of Homeland Security’s obligation to enforce federal immigration law” that “would seriously and irreparably harm the state of Texas and its citizens. ”
Thousands of immigrants in detention centers have deportation orders that can be executed once their legal remedies are exhausted. Thousands more who live in the interior of the country could be arrested because they have pending deportation orders.
The Biden government said the break was meant to allow time for an internal review. The moratorium will cover most immigrants facing deportation, unless they arrived in the United States after November 1, 2020, are suspected of committing acts of terrorism or espionage, or pose a threat to national security.
“We are confident that, as the case progresses, it will become clear that this measure was fully appropriate to order a temporary pause to allow the agency to carefully review its policies, procedures and enforcement priorities – while allowing for a greater focus on threats to public security and national security, ”a White House spokesman said on Tuesday. “President Biden remains committed to taking immediate steps to reform our immigration system to ensure that it upholds American values, while keeping our communities safe.