Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas, has officially filed a lawsuit targeting the Biden administration because of its choice to put an end to a public health order that allowed for the deportation of millions of illegal immigrants in order to defend against COVID-19.
The lawsuit from Paxton is just the most recent challenge from Republicans towards Bidens decision to Remove the powers of Title 42, which is a COVID-19 policy set in place by Trump back in March of 2020 that puts restrictions on asylum claims. The lawsuit alleges that the administration failed to think about any possible outcomes to take crop up in the wake of ending the order and that it outright failed to follow through with notice-and-comment requirements, in which people are allowed to take part in considering a proposed rule.
“The Defendants now seek to eliminate their Title 42 border-control measures, which are the only rules holding back a devastating flood of illegal immigration,” reads the complaint. “But they failed to follow the Administrative Procedure Act in attempting this destructive rescission of Title 42. Without justification or concern for Texans, the Defendants unlawfully disregarded the APA’s notice-and-comment requirements, refused to consider numerous factors of crucial importance to their rulemaking, and laid bare the incoherence of their decision-making.”
Paxton seems to have joined a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers and chief legal advisors that stand in open opposition of the rollback of Title 42. The number of Democrats has been steadily increasing in their efforts to join Republican members of Congress in calling for Biden to refrain from ending the directive. One senior aide for the DEmocrats stated that “there’s a lot of lobbying” and that Biden should “extend it and move on.”
Paxton claimed that the repeal of Title 42 will only result in worsening an already horribly ineffective border system that has been seen under Biden. He also claimed that the Migrant Protection Protocols, more well known as “Remain in Mexico,” should also remain in place. The policy from the Trump administration lets the government release migrants that have asylum claims into Mexico as they wait to stand at hearings in the U.S. and is being looked over by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Those two programs have been the most effective at stopping people from coming into the country,” stated Paxton. “This is huge for my state. We’re already overwhelmed given the fact that the Biden administration is ignoring federal law and every other aspect of immigration. This is the only thing we have left.”
“You know, they’re already pouring through,” he also stated. “This basically ends any kind of idea that there’s any border at all.”