Paxton lawsuit blocks deportation pause
Temporary order by Trump appointee halting immigration action by Biden is expected to be appealed by Department of Justice
A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Joe Biden’s order to halt the deportations of certain unauthorized immigrants for 100 days, after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton challenged it in court.
U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton’s nationwide order marks Paxton’s first win in what he’s predicted will be a string of legal action against the Biden administration.
The decision from Tipton, a Trump appointee in the Southern District of Texas in Corpus Christi, upholds federal law that sets a 90-day timeline for a person’s deportation once a removal order has been filed in his or her case.
However, the temporary restraining order Tipton granted will only last until he decides whether to grant a more permanent injunction that would stand until the case concludes.
The Department of Homeland Security policy, issued by the acting secretary on Biden’s first day, was part of a broader strategy that agency officials said would allow them to focus on the “highest enforcement priorities” of securing the southwest border and national security.
Attorneys for the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but they had said in a hearing last week that if Tipton granted the restraining order, they planned to fight it.
The ruling is a bright spot after a difficult stretch for Paxton, who is under investigation by the FBI after seven whistleblowers in his office accused him of accepting bribes and abuse of office for working on behalf of a campaign donor. (He’s maintained his innocence in that case, as well as another in which he’s been indicted on felony securities fraud charges.)
On Dec. 11, a suit Paxton took to the U.S. Supreme Court attempting to reverse presidential election results in four battleground states was swiftly rebuffed by the high court, even after then-President Donald Trump had hailed it as “the big one.”
Tuesday’s ruling was a minor one, certain to be appealed, but Paxton celebrated it as a huge win.
“Texas is the FIRST state in the nation to bring a lawsuit against the Biden Admin. AND WE WON,” he wrote.
Texas Rep. Chip Roy, an Austin Republican who was once Paxton’s top deputy, also applauded the ruling, calling the Biden administration policy “an illegal executive overreach that usurps the power of Congress to rewrite federal law.”
“President Biden’s assault on the legal process is a dereliction of his duty to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’ and it puts the safety and security of Americans at risk in order to appease his far-left base,” Roy said.
The Texas Democratic Party and immigrants’ rights groups decried the ruling in the hours after it was released. Nathalie Rayes, president and CEO of the Latino Victory Fund, called it “unfortunate
and an affront to the values of a country that has reaped the benefits of immigration.”
“The 100-day deportation moratorium was a promise made to the Latino community, immigrants, and millions of Americans who want our country to have a fair, humane immigration system that works,” Rayes said.
In his 18-page order, Tipton agreed with lawyers for Texas who argued that the deportation pause was unlawfully “arbitrary and capricious.” It “not only fails to consider potential policies more limited in scope and time, but it also fails to provide any concrete, reasonable justification for a 100-day pause on deportations,” the judge wrote.
Biden’s policy did not apply to noncitizens who pose a national security risk or those who were not in the U.S. before Nov. 1.
Tipton also sided with Texas in its argument that the policy could cause irreparable harm by costing the state in social services, uncompensated health care expenses and other state-provided benefits as well as education costs for immigrants who are in the country illegally.
While a DOJ lawyer had argued that those damages were too vague, Tipton disagreed.
During a hearing last week, Tipton had expressed reservations about issuing a nationwide injunction, which has been hotly debated in legal circles with no Supreme Court decision on the matter to date, but he did so anyway.