Texas Federal Judge Drew Tipton blocked President Joe Biden’s new deportation order after the Lone Star State sued the White House administration. Biden proposed the new 100-day moratorium on most immigrant deportations on inauguration day as part of a slew of new orders.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Biden's administration, claiming the moratorium is unconstitutional and violates a prior contract between the state and the Department of Homeland Security (DOHS).
Paxton used Twitter to defy the Biden order, saying, “Within six days of Biden’s inauguration, Texas has HALTED his illegal deportation freeze. (It) was a seditious left-wing insurrection. And my team and I stopped it.”
Paxton alleges the Biden order will create financial chaos in Texas due to the surge of immigrants that may flood the state, raising health care and education costs.
Federal judge Tipton agreed, saying, “Texas argues that 'the categorical refusal to remove aliens ordered removable will encourage additional illegal immigration into Texas,' thereby exacerbating its public service costs. Such injury is not, as a legal matter, purely speculative. The Court finds that the foregoing establishes a substantial risk of imminent and irreparable harm to Texas.”
The American Civil Liberties Union vehemently protested the AG block of the immigrant order, calling it a blatant attempt to suppress votes and support former president Trump’s anti-immigrant stance.
Attorney for the ACLU in Texas Kate Huddleston said, “Paxton sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election by attempting to baselessly suppress votes; now he is attempting to force the Biden administration to follow Trump's xenophobic policies. The administration’s pause on deportations is not only lawful but necessary to ensure that families are not separated and people are not returned to danger needlessly while the new administration reviews past actions.”
President Biden proposed a wide-ranging immigration bill, allowing about eleven million illegal immigrants living in the US to become legal citizens. His order includes multiple relaxed, new guidelines concerning border agents and enforcement.
The new legal deportation battle between the White House administration and Trump’s followers may be the first of many as Biden has overturned numerous policies since taking office.
President Biden is not the first or last president to change policy once inaugurated. Nicknamed the “unilateral presidency," most presidents seek to put their stamp upon policies, often overturning prior domestic or other policies via executive initiatives, without congressional approval.
However, lower federal courts can and do disrupt new executive orders often. This national injunction power is a tool available to the ninety-four federal district courts in the US since the 1960s. District court judges such as Tipton can issue injunctions that block a president’s executive orders nationwide.
The Supreme Court recently impacted such national injunctions by issuing an opinion during the Trump administration’s attempt to stop “legal aliens” and families from signing up for Medicaid and becoming US “public charges.”
A 1999 federal administration action permitted immigration officials to treat any immigrants receiving government cash such as welfare as a negative factor. However, this rule did not consider non-cash payments such as Medicaid a negative factor for immigrants.
The proposed new Trump rule sought to include non-cash benefits such as Medicaid enrollment as a negative factor for immigrants. The Supreme Court ruled to keep the 1999 order and not add in Medicaid as a negative factor for immigrants since it would depress healthcare access for their families. The Supreme Court granted a stay in January 2020.
During the Trump immigration and Medicaid case, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested the Supreme Court may limit the lower courts’ ability to issue national injunctions.
As the national injunction and executive orders pendulum continues to swing, all eyes are on the Supreme Court to see if they will weigh in on the power of lower federal district courts.
