Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, filed lawsuit against the Biden administration for suspending the deportation of undocumented immigrants for 100 days. The attorney general said that the state and the last administration had an eleventh-hour agreement that will make it compulsory for the Department of Homeland Security to discuss with Texas before making any modifications on existing deportation policies.
The suit which was filed just about 50 hours after Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday is the first of its kind against the administration’s immigration policies.
“The administration issued a policy negating immigration policies that have the backing of Congress by pausing the deportation of illegal immigrants, that those same policies ask to be removed from the United States,” the complaint reads.
The suit adds that the administration’s actions, on its very first day in office, defied the provisions of the Constitution and disregarded its vow to cooperate with the state of Texas in addressing immigration policies that concern the two parties.
During the last days of former President Donald Trump’s administration, Homeland Security and some US states, including Texas, reached agreements that were geared towards slowing down President Joe Biden’s promise to reverse many of Trump’s policies. Ken Cuccinelli, the then deputy secretary of DHS signed the agreements, but it has not been established if the agreements can stop Biden’s policies or not, Bloomberg reports.
Paxton who is a Republican is currently leading other major lawsuits against Democrat policies, including the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the Obamacare schemes. The DACA program seeks to protect illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States when they were infants from being deported. Last month, the attorney general also led a suit challenging Biden’s win in the November 3 election.
More lawsuits against Biden’s immigration policies are to be expected as Republicans wish to retain Trump’s strict policies against undocumented immigrants in the country. The president aims at someday making it possible for the nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants to become US citizens, a move that will only call for even more lawsuits against the administration.
Douglas Gansler, a Democrat politician who served as the Attorney General of Maryland for 8 years said that the lawsuit is the most recent indication of the division of the attorneys general of US states between the present administration and the last one.
“Such cases have been repeated with every transition from Republican to Democrat and vice versa,” Gansler said. “Republican state attorneys general filed many suits against the Obama Administration, Democrat attorneys general did the same for Trump, and we are only seeing the first of many that are sure to come for the Biden administration.”
Paxton is currently being investigated for bribery and abuse of office claims brought to light by some of his former aides. The deportation pause, which will be effective from Friday, was made to ensure that acceptable and fair immigration policies are in place before decisions are made, according to a DHS statement made earlier this week.
Source: cnn.com