Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the administration of President Joe Biden for allegedly helping spread the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) in the United States' southern border by allowing illegal immigrants to enter and congregate in large numbers in migrant facilities.
The lawsuit alleges that Biden officials "have abandoned the pre-existing protections against the introduction into Texas and the United States of aliens infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus during a pandemic."
By allowing illegal immigrants to cross the border, Paxton charged the Biden administration with putting the public health and the economic recovery of Texas and the United States at risk. (Related: BIDEN "IMPORTING" COVID: Up to 50% of illegal immigrants are COVID-infected and are crossing the US southern border in droves right now.)
Under the administration of former President Donald Trump, officials issued a rule named Title 42 to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the United States and to deport any aliens that are caught.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said at the time that invoking Title 42 was to prevent migrants introducing COVID-19 into the U.S.
But as soon as Biden took office, his administration quickly rolled back the use of Title 42. This allowed unaccompanied minors to stay in the country and decreased the number of families expelled under the order.
Rollback of Trump's Title 42 rule helped create Biden's border crisis
In a statement on Thursday, April 22, Paxton said rolling back Title 42 created "an undeniable crisis on our southern border."
"By failing to take custody of criminal aliens and giving no explanation for this reckless policy change, the Biden administration is demonstrating a blatant disregard for Texans' and Americans' safety," reads Paxton's statement.
The attorney general further argued that Biden's rolling back of Trump's Title 42 rule is preventing Texas' economy from properly reopening "at a time when businesses need it the most" and when Texan officials want to reopen schools and return to in-person instruction.
"Law and order must be immediately upheld and enforced to ensure the safety of our communities and the reopening of the strongest economy in the country."
Paxton argues that Biden's administration is violating its own CDC regulations, as well as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 requiring migrants who might spread "diseases of public health significance" to be detained and prevented from entering American society.
"Instead of using the CDC's authority to prevent the introduction of covered aliens into the United States during a pandemic, Defendants have chosen to take courses of action that have resulted in the release of tens of thousands of aliens into Texas and the United States," reads the lawsuit. "Absent this court's intervention, such releases will continue for the foreseeable future."
The attorney general is asking a federal court to reinstate Trump's Title 42 rule to force Biden to expel illegal immigrants to Mexico.
"More Texans will be exposed to COVID-19, more Texans will contract COVID-19, more Texans will die from COVID-19, and Texas will incur significant costs in terms of healthcare and law enforcement resources," reads the lawsuit further.
The Office of the Attorney General of Texas estimates that illegal immigrants are costing Texas taxpayers around $855 million each year.
Paxton filed the lawsuit in the District Court for the Southern District of Texas in the city of Fort Worth. It lists the defendants as the Department of Homeland Security and its secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas; Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tae Johnson, Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Troy Miller; and Acting Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services Tracy Renaud.
Gene Hamilton, a former immigration official at Homeland Security and the Justice Department under Trump, is listed alongside Paxton as a lawyer in the case. Hamilton is acting as a representative of the America First Legal Foundation (AFLF), a conservative legal group founded by former Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller. The AFLF was launched with Trump's backing.
In a statement, a White House spokesperson said the Biden administration is committed to enacting policies that are radically different from those put in place by the Trump administration, especially with regards to unaccompanied minors.
In January, fewer than 76,000 illegal immigrants entered the U.S. That number shot up to over 168,000 in March. Several coronavirus outbreaks have already taken place in immigrant holding facilities in Texas.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed in March that most illegal immigrants are tested, but not all. "There's a proposal for testing all of these individuals as they come across," she said.
Psaki blamed Texas for refusing to cover the cost of testing and quarantining the migrants.
"So, I think the question is: Why is [Texas] standing in the way of local communities getting the funding and support they need to help with testing, isolation and quarantining efforts?" she continued.
Recent lawsuit the seventh case Texas has filed against Biden
This is the seventh lawsuit Paxton and the state of Texas have filed against the Biden administration since it took office in January.
He filed a lawsuit earlier in April to restore a policy put in place by the Trump administration that forced potential migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. to wait in Mexico or other countries while their applications were being processed. Paxton and many other prominent Republicans have pointed to the end of this program as one of the contributing factors for the sudden influx of illegal immigrants at the border.
More than 70,000 asylum seekers who were enrolled in the Trump administration's program were sent back to Mexico. But in February, the Biden administration allowed many of the asylum seekers who signed up for the program to cross back into the U.S.
Paxton has also sued Biden over a deportation moratorium, over procedures that reduced the number of deportations of illegal immigrants and over the administration's decision to retract the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought oil from Alberta, Canada all the way down to oil refineries in Texas.
Learn more about the ongoing crisis at the southern border and the Biden administration's immigration policies at OpenBorders.news.
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