Fifteen states with Republican attorneys general filed a petition in federal court Monday night to prevent the rescission of a pandemic-era order allowing U. S. border officials to be allowed to sue for a federal court to avoid rescission. The U. S. government temporarily deports immigrants for public health reasons.
Arizona, Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming petitioned the U. S. District Court judge to apply to the U. S. District Court judge. U. S. Emmet Sullivan of the U. S. District CourtThe U. S. government in Washington, D. C. , allowed them to interfere in a lawsuit over the immigration deportation policy, known as Title 42.
Legal for the first time through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in March 2020 under the Trump administration, Title 42 allowed the U. S. to do so. The U. S. government deports migrants more than 2. 4 million times to Mexico or their home country, allowing them to seek asylum, the government says.
Earlier this month, Sullivan declared Title 42 illegal, arguing that the federal government had failed to decree or explain border deportations well. Sullivan gave Biden’s administration five weeks, until Dec. 21, to avoid deportation of immigrants under Title 42. He said he was doing it reluctantly, so that officials would simply prepare for the policy change.
In its emergency filing Monday, the coalition of states said Biden administration officials had “abandoned their defense” of Title 42 through just five weeks of suspension of Sullivan’s ruling and no appeal.
“Because the invalidation of Title 42 orders will directly harm the states, they now seek to interfere to offer a defense of Title 42 policy so that its validity can be resolved on merit, than through a strategic surrender,” the states. Wrote.
The states said the expiration of Title 42 would lead to even more immigrants crossing the U. S. -Mexico border illegally. A sharp increase in migration, Republican attorneys general argued, would hurt their states financially, driving up prices for social services for immigrants.
The states’ petition was opposed through the Biden administration and the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit challenging Section 42 removals.
Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney in the case, said the states’ request is inconsistent with their opposition to other pandemic-related restrictions, such as vaccines and masks.
“States openly and wrongly seek to use Title 42 to limit asylum and not for public fitness purposes,” Gelernt said. “All of a sudden, those states think it’s mandatory to put COVID limitations in place when it comes to migrants fleeing danger. “
While protecting Title 42 for a year as a key measure of public suitability, Biden’s administration announced in April that it would phase out deportations, saying they would no longer slow the spread of COVID-19 along the U. S. -Mexico border.
But a coalition of Republican-led states, adding many of those who joined Monday’s motion, convinced a federal judge in Louisiana to halt the termination of Title 42 on procedural grounds. That order was replaced by Sullivan’s resolution earlier this month.
While Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials have said they are preparing for the completion of Title 42 and potential upcoming construction at illegal border crossings, its completion will eliminate the primary policy the Biden administration has relied on to care about the record. Number of detentions of migrants.
In fiscal year 2022, the federal government along the southern border apprehended migrants nearly 2. 4 million times, an all-time high. More than a million of those border encounters have led to the deportation of Title 42 migrants, according to Customs and Border Protection. (CBP) statistics.
Last month, the U. S. The U. S. expanded Title 42, deporting thousands of Venezuelan migrants to Mexico in an effort to deter an unprecedented wave of Venezuelan migration to the southern border.