20th Bor­der-Cri­sis Law­suit Against Biden As El Jefe, Czar Go AWOL to “Protect” Ukraine Border

Pax­ton Launch­es 9^th Bor­der-Cri­sis Law­suit Against Biden, Mark­ing 20^th Law­suit Since Inau­gu­ra­tion Day AG Paxton

Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that he, along with seven other state attorneys general, filed a lawsuit against the Biden Administration for its abuse of the Central American Minors (CAM) Refugee and Parole Program.

The CAM program provides certain aliens in the United States the ability to secure protected status after entering the country illegally. Then, the aliens can petition the government to bring in extended family members from Honduras, El Salvador, or Guatemala. There is no authority in federal law for this sort of program.

“The Biden Administration has sown nothing but disaster for our country through its illegal, unconstitutional immigration policies,” Attorney General Paxton said. “Biden’s latest round of flagrant law-breaking includes his Central American Minors Program, which has contributed significantly to many states being forced to take in even more aliens. My fellow attorneys general and I are suing to stop it.”

In addition to its abuse of the CAM program, the Biden Administration has, since it came to power a year ago, attempted to freeze deportations, stop border wall construction, cease arrests and deportations of broad categories of aliens, and terminate the Remain-in-Mexico program. Attorney General Paxton has sued Biden on all these matters—and more.

The states joining Texas are Arkansas, Alaska, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, and Oklahoma.

The States of Texas, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, and Oklahoma (collectively “Plaintiff States”) bring this civil action against the above-listed Defendants for declaratory and injunctive relief and allege as follows:
INTRODUCTION

1. Aliens who are qualifying relatives of American citizens or lawful permanent residents often wait years—or decades—to lawfully immigrate to the United States. They endure lengthy processes, background checks, and paperwork requirements that can seem substantial. But they go through the processes that Congress created, and they patiently wait for their opportunity to lawfully enter the United States and pursue the American dream.
2. Conversely, illegal aliens do not have the right under federal law to petition the federal government for their relatives abroad to join them in residing in the United States. There are no lawful paths for aliens who lack status to come join other aliens who lack status in the United States—and for good reason. It defies common sense. No sovereign nation would reward those who break the law by permitting family members abroad to join them in living in the sovereign territory unlawfully, particularly with the assistance of the government itself. To do so would undermine national sovereignty and would be fundamentally unfair to those who pursue lawful immigration channels and patiently wait for their opportunity to immigrate to the United States.

But the Biden Administration has created such a program for certain illegal aliens who are from El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras (the region known as the Northern Triangle) and who reside in the United States, so long as they meet certain arbitrary qualifications created by the Administration. In short, if an illegal alien from one of those three countries is inside the United States and has so much as a pending application for asylum, they can petition the United States Government to bring their minor children into the United States—despite no explicit authority from Congress to do so. And not just the illegal alien’s minor children, but also the in-country parent of a qualifying child, a legal guardian, or a child’s primary caregiver.

4. In fact, beneficiaries under this extra-statutory regime—innocuously named the “Central American Minors Program,” or “CAM”—are permitted to enter and reside within the United States for a practically indefinite period.
5. The CAM Program is an inartful combination of two different statutory authorities in the immigration laws: the Refugee Admissions Program under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, and the “parole” authority under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5)(A).
6. The United States first screens aliens for eligibility for the Refugee Admissions Program, but most of the applicants do not come close to meeting the legal standard to be considered a “refugee” as it is defined in 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42). Instead, the crux of the CAM program is its use of the parole authority—an authority only available on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or for significant public benefit—to allow the very same individuals who did not qualify as

refugees to come into the United States. A result that is entirely inconsistent with the law.

7. To the extent that it provides benefits outside of those provided in law by the Refugee Admissions Program, the CAM Program is an unlawful artifice of the Biden Administration’s imagination, never authorized by Congress. And to the extent that it facilitates the entry into the United States of illegal aliens’ family members based on the mere existence of an application for speculative benefits, it is an extraordinarily disastrous program to employ in the middle of an unprecedented border crisis.
8. The CAM Program is illegal. The Biden Administration created it without consideration of the effects it will have on the Plaintiff States and the continuing crisis along the Southwest Border. The Administration created it without notice-and-comment rulemaking. And it imposes substantial, irreparable harms on the Plaintiff States.
9. This Court should declare unlawful and enjoin the Biden Administration’s unlawful program.