Three red states — Arizona, Louisiana, and Missouri — have filed suit to block the Biden administration from lifting Title 42. The administration said on Friday that it would lift the public health policy that has been in place since the Trump administration, which enabled border enforcement to summarily expel millions of aliens who attempted to enter the country at the southern border. The order is set to be lifted on May 23 — at which time DHS estimates the already overwhelming influx at the southern border may increase to as many as 18,000 apprehensions per day.
On Sunday, the attorneys general of the three states filed a civil suit in federal court in Louisiana. The suit names the CDC, HHS, DHS, USBP, ICE, and the DOJ, along with their directors and President Biden, as defendants, and asks the court for relief from the impending humanitarian and security disaster.
“This suit challenges an imminent, man-made, self-inflicted calamity: the abrupt elimination of the only safety valve preventing this Administration’s disastrous border policies from devolving into an unmitigated chaos and catastrophe,” reads the complaint.
DHS Secretary Mayorkas claims the department has “put in place a comprehensive, whole-of-government strategy to manage any potential increase in the number of migrants encountered at our border.” However, many are expressing incredulity that this is possible — including Democrats.
The suit notes that one unnamed Democrat senator observed, “This is the wrong decision…. [I]t’s clear that this administration’s lack of a plan to deal with this crisis will further strain our border communities.” Another said the “decision to announce an end to Title 42 despite not yet having a comprehensive plan ready shows a lack of understanding about the crisis at our border.”
The suit also quotes Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) as calling the administration’s plans an “an outright ‘frightening decision.’” It repeats Manchin’s comments that “[w]e are nowhere near prepared to deal with that influx,” and that “Title 42 has been an essential tool in combatting the spread of COVID-19 and controlling the influx of migrants at our southern border. … We are already facing an unprecedented increase in migrants this year, and that will only get worse if the Administration ends the Title 42 policy.” Arizona Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly, both Democrats, also expressed concern with the decision.
The suit argues that the decision to terminate Title 42 is not only “unfathomably bad public policy,” but “[i]t is also profoundly illegal.” The complaint alleges that the decision violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) because it flouted the notice-and-comment requirements for rulemaking and is also arbitrary and capricious.
The complaint further slams the decision because it is purportedly based on rapidly improving COVID-19 conditions, yet the administration “has not seen fit elsewhere to act upon these improvements by, for example, lifting the mask mandate on airline travel, or loosening or repealing its vaccination mandates, or ending its relentless campaign to discharge members of our military who have applied for religious exemptions for vaccination requirements—which have been almost uniformly denied. The Title 42 Revocation thus stands as a radical outlier—seemingly the only COVID-19-based restriction the Administration sees fit to end.”
Sadly, it now seems to be SOP for the Biden Collective to offer better terms to illegal aliens storming the border than to actual U.S. citizens — including active military and veterans.
Source: PJ Media
