The Biden administration is required by a federal judge to stop releasing migrants from Mexico quickly, which could put more strain on already overcrowded holding centers.
To allow the government time to file an appeal, the injunction won’t go into force for a week. The departments of Justice and Homeland Security were unable to comment right away.
In a 109-page judgment that followed a trial in January in Pensacola, Florida, U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II harshly criticized President Joe Biden’s border policy and ruled that a crucial administrative tool was unlawful.
The Southwest Border has been “essentially converted into a meaningless boundary in the sand and not much more than a speedbump for aliens rushing into the country,” he claimed.
Wetherell, a Trump appointee, attacked the administration’s decision to cease construction of a border wall, abolish the requirement that asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their cases are heard in immigration court, and refocus enforcement efforts. He also criticized the administration’s decision to discontinue family detention at the border, which authorities have started to rethink.
“Together, these deeds amounted to putting up a blinking ‘Come In, We’re Open’ sign on the southern border,” according to Wetherell.
Wetherell’s words reflected Republican talking themes that placed all the blame for problems at the border on Biden. While the numbers have increased over the past two years, his predecessors, Donald Trump, and Barack Obama had comparable difficulties.
“President Biden is to blame for the border issue, and his illegal immigration policies make this country less safe,” according to Ashley Moody, the Republican attorney general of Florida, who brought the lawsuit on the state’s behalf in 2021. “A federal judge has now ordered Biden to obey the law, and his government should start securing the border immediately to protect the American people,” the judge wrote.
The administration’s increasing use of parole to swiftly release migrants from Border Patrol custody so they can pursue their immigration cases is under question. Usually, they are given a two-month reporting deadline and given a mobile device to track them.
572,575 migrants were released on parole by the Border Patrol last year, including a record-breaking 130,563 in December. After the administration announced measures to discourage Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans from illegally crossing the border and instead seek refuge by applying online, locating a financial sponsor, and entering the United States at an airport, parole fell 96% to 5,225 migrants in January.