Leading a coalition of 20 states, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit in federal district court on Tuesday against the Biden administration, claiming the new immigration parole system the president declared earlier this month that would allow 360,000 people a year from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the country is illegal.
“Every state in America, especially border states like Texas, is being crushed by the impacts of illegal immigration,” said Attorney General Paxton in a press release. “The Biden open borders agenda has created a humanitarian crisis that is increasing crime and violence in our streets, overwhelming local communities, and worsening the opioid crisis. This unlawful amnesty program, which will invite hundreds of thousands of aliens into the U.S. every year, will only make this immigration crisis drastically worse.”
Biden and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas placed the parole program into action when they announced the first week of January new measures to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the United States from Mexico. The new immigration parole system expanded the current version to include allowing 30,000 people per month to legally enter the United States from the four countries if they apply from their home countries, pass a background check, and prove they have a financial supporter in the United States.
“Fundamentally, we are here because our immigration system is broken, outdated, and in desperate need of reform. The laws we enforce have not been updated for decades. It takes four or more years to conclude the average asylum case, immigration judges have a backlog of more than 1.7 million cases, and we have more than 11 million undocumented people in our country, many of whom work in the shadows, pay taxes, are our neighbors, attend our places of worship, work on the frontlines, and farm the food on our tables.” Mayorkas said during the announced implementation of the expanded parole system.
The Biden administration thought the new measures would ease pressure from border states by lowering foot traffic along the border, as the number of illegal border crossings were rapidly growing with border patrol authorities stopping a reported 251,487 illegal aliens along the Mexican border in December. That’s up 40 percent from 179,253 reported in December 2021.
To add to the serious need to protect our borders and stop illegals from crossing, border patrol agents have arrested a record 38 people on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database during the first three months of fiscal 2023 (October through December), according to a recent U.S. Customs and Border Protection report. Center Square reported that “agents apprehended a record 98 in all of fiscal 2022 and 15 in fiscal 2021.” Adding, “by comparison, 14 were apprehended from fiscal years 2017-2020 under the Trump administration.”
With the massive increase of illegal aliens crossing the nation’s southern border that has numbered over 5 million since Biden took office, it is no wonder the states most affected by illegal immigration are fighting back by seeking help to end the border crisis, which includes this new lawsuit.
Leading the coalition of states in the lawsuit, Paxton declared that they are suing the Biden Administration over the new DHS program as it “unlawfully creates a de facto pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of aliens.”
Paxton’s lawsuit statement shared that the “DHS program would establish a new visa system” and that “Congress has authorized parole [Immigration and Nationality Act] only for foreign aliens who meet very specific standards that have not been met in this instance.” He then noted that the “Biden Administration also instituted this program without engaging in the usual notice and comment rulemaking process required by law. This constitutes yet another episode in which the Administration has abused its executive authority in furtherance of its apparent objective for immigration policy: open borders and amnesty for all.”
The lawsuit states, “The parole program established by the Department fails each of the law’s three limiting factors. It is not case-by-case, is not for urgent humanitarian reasons, and advances no significant public benefit.”
The Hill pointed out “according to the American Immigration Council, however, “while humanitarian parole is explicitly authorized by the [Immigration and Nationality Act] for ‘urgent humanitarian reasons,’ there is no statutory or regulatory definition of an ‘urgent humanitarian reason,’” giving the executive a wide berth in defining parole.”
It appears as though Biden’s 2019 presidential “surge to the border” debate comments are coming back to haunt not only him but also the whole country, as he continues to promote an open border, which is fueling the surge. He said during the debate exposing his utter lack of understanding the need for a secure border, “what I would do as president …would, in fact, make sure that there is, we immediately surge to the border — all those people are seeking asylum, they deserve to be heard. That’s who we are. We’re a nation who says, if you want to flee, and you’re freeing oppression, you should come.”
We can only hope that the federal judge hearing this case at the United States District Court Southern District of Texas Victoria Division, will stand with the current law and rule the immigration parole system as illegal and put an end to Biden’s continued attempts at leading an invasion into our nation.
