IRLI Goes after Biden’s Border Enforcement Stand-Down in Texas

Press Releases

May 21, 2021

Texas, Louisiana claim White House priorities violate federal law

WASHINGTON—The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas urging the court to grant a request by Texas and Louisiana to enjoin the administration’s immigration enforcement priorities.

In its brief, IRLI shows how these enforcement priorities violate the law by preventing immigration officers from taking mandatory enforcement actions against a broad range of aliens. Under the enforcement guidelines, officers may only use their authority to apprehend, detain, or remove terrorists, spies, other national security threats, those who entered the United States after November 1, 2020, aggravated felons, and criminal gang members. Officers are blocked from apprehending, detaining, or removing any other aliens, including the vast majority of criminal aliens. In its brief, IRLI also places Biden’s priorities in their larger context: a whole series of Biden non-enforcement policies that, working together, have explosively increased unlawful entry by aliens—including many fugitives from justice and other criminals—from around the world.

“With each passing day, it becomes more and more clear that the Biden plan is to reduce enforcement to such low levels that illegal entry, including entry by criminals, keeps skyrocketing,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “The enforcement priorities are a key component of this deliberate, across-the-board policy, which we are dedicated to opposing at every turn.”

The case is Texas v. United States, No. 6:21-cv-00016 (S.D. Tex.).

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