AG: Keep Trump’s border rules
Paxton rejects Biden priorities; critics say Texas suit ‘baseless’
WASHINGTON — Texas is yet again pushing back on President Joe Biden's efforts to undo Trump-era immigration policies, this time targeting the new administration's move to narrow deportation targets, which Attorney General Ken Paxton says has left the state picking up the federal government's slack.
The Texas Republican on Tuesday filed a lawsuit, joined by the Louisiana attorney general, challenging new enforcement priorities the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The department no longer prioritizes the deportations of immigrants living
in the U.S. without legal authorization who are convicted of drug offenses or “crimes of moral turpitude,” such as evading arrest or fraud.
Paxton claims immigration law requires the administration to deport such individuals.
“President Biden's outright refusal to enforce the law is exacerbating an unprecedented border crisis,” Paxton said in a statement. “The Biden administration is demonstrating a blatant disregard for Texans' and Americans' safety.”
Immigration attorneys on Tuesday questioned Paxton's logic, saying the lawsuit appears to admit the state is illegally jailing immigrants even after the federal government has rescinded its requests that they remain incarcerated.
Kate Huddleston, an attorney for the ACLU of Texas, said Paxton's latest suit is “yet another baseless, xenophobic attempt to distract from the real problems facing the state of Texas.”
“Texas does not have veto power to force this administration to continue the Trump administration's policies,” Huddleston said.
Paxton has sought to make Texas the leader in pushing back on Biden’s policies on immigration, energy and more.
Last month, he led 13 other Republican attorneys general in asking the Supreme Court to allow them to defend a Trump-era rule that made it harder for immigrants to obtain green cards if they rely on safety net programs, such as Medicaid or food stamps. He also led a group of 19 other Republican attorneys general in suing Biden for revoking the 2019 presidential permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing the president can’t change energy policy set by Congress.
The most recent lawsuit is a sort of spinoff from an earlier case Paxton filed, which led a federal judge to block Biden’s order halting certain deportations for 100 days.
Biden’s White House has said the deportation pause was meant to give the Department of Homeland Security time to recalibrate and focus on the “highest enforcement priorities” for securing the southwestern border and national security.
Now Paxton is targeting the administration’s early steps in redefining its goals.
The Biden administration took steps to narrow deportation targets that the Trump administration had broadened to include immigrants without serious criminal records. Homeland Security in February issued temporary guidance to only go after those with aggravated felonies, people considered national security threats or those who crossed the border illegally after Nov. 1.
Paxton’s lawsuit claims the guidance has led Immigration and Customs Enforcement to revoke “dozens” of requests from Texas jails to detain immigrants. The federal government has also declined to take custody of some it had previously sought, the lawsuit says.
“Of course, the States of Texas and Louisiana must do what they can to protect their citizens, so some of these criminal aliens have remained in state custody at the state’s expense,” the lawsuit says.
Immigration attorneys and advocates were questioning that move Tuesday.
Leon Fresco, an immigration attorney in Washington, D.C., said that unless the state was jailing them for a separate crime, “they have no legal justification to hold them” after ICE rescinds detainer requests.
Aaron Reichlin-melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council — a D.C. think tank that opposed Trump’s immigration policies — called it “the worst political theater.”
“Uh, is Texas admitting *in their lawsuit* to illegally holding people after they’ve finished serving their sentences, in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment?” Reichlinmelnick tweeted. “If so, that is just flagrantly unconstitutional.”
Paxton’s office did not respond to a request for more information on those still in custody.
Paxton, meanwhile, says the administration failed to give Texas warning about the change in policy, despite an enforcement agreement with DHS that says the state will help with immigration enforcement, but requires DHS to “consult” Texas before taking administrative actions.
Fresco said the courts have tended to grant presidents freedom in deciding enforcement priorities, though he said Paxton’s arguments are new.
“At the end of the day, the administration has broad discretion over who to deport, when to deport them and for what reason to deport them,” Fresco said.
The lawsuit comes as
Texas Republicans have sought to keep a focus on an influx of migration at the border that they call a “crisis” of Biden’s creation — blaming his shifting immigration policies, despite the fact that border crossings were on the rise while Trump was still in office and similar surges have occurred in past years, including 2019 and 2014.
The Biden administration has said it is still turning away the majority of those seeking to enter the country at the southern border, though thousands of migrant children and a growing number of families seeking asylum have been let in.
Paxton, who was indicted by a grand jury in 2015, is still awaiting trial on state securities fraud charges. He is also the focus of an FBI investigation into allegations that he used his office to benefit a political donor. Paxton has denied wrongdoing in both cases.