Texas and Missouri sued President Joe Biden’s administration in an effort to restore the so-called “remain in Mexico” policy that the president revoked shortly after entering office.
The states claimed President Joe Biden unlawfully halted the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, enacted by the previous administration, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said the administration’s decision to halt the MPP has led to the surge of criminals attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
“President Biden could immediately remedy the influx of crime pouring across our border by reinstating the Migrant Protection Protocols,” Paxton said in a statement. “Dangerous criminals are taking advantage of the lapse in law enforcement and it’s resulting in human trafficking, smuggling, a plethora of violent crimes, and a massive, unprecedented burden on state and federal programs for which taxpayers must foot the bill.”
“We cannot allow this lawlessness to destroy our communities any longer,” Paxton said. “President Biden must act.”
Immediately after Biden was sworn in on Jan. 20, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it would cease enrolling immigrants in the MPP program. Former President Donald Trump’s administration introduced the MPP in December 2018, mandating border officials to send asylum seekers back to Mexico while they waited for their immigration court appearance.
Before MPP, DHS released tens of thousands of illegal immigrants into the U.S. where they disappeared, the attorneys general said Tuesday. Trump’s policy was an effort to prevent illegal immigrants, including criminals, from entering the country.
Missouri and Texas further accused the Biden administration of “exacerbating” the border crisis and giving human traffickers the ability to game the U.S. immigration system.
“The blame for the current crisis at the Southern border should be laid squarely at the feet of President Biden and his administration,” Schmitt said in a statement after the suit was filed.
“President Biden’s failure to control the massive influx of migrants — an influx invited by his lax policies — has opened the floodgates to human trafficking that will have lasting effects on Missouri and the United States and puts our nationally-recognized efforts to fight human trafficking in jeopardy,” Schmitt said.
The lawsuit said Biden violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a 1946 law that requires the executive branch to have sufficient reasoning for all actions taken. The majority of lawsuits that states filed against the Trump administration accused it of violating the APA, according to The Washington Post.
“They didn’t like the Trump administration violating APA,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry told the Daily Caller News Foundation last week. “But they were quick to violate the APA, as soon as Biden became president.”
Landry and Paxton sued the Biden administration last week over separate border policies that they alleged result in the release of criminal illegal immigrants. In March, Montana and Arizona filed a lawsuit against Biden over his executive order halting deportations.
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