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A federal judge blocked a new catch-and-release policy announced by President Joe Biden’s border deputies shortly before they lifted the Title 42 border barrier at midnight.
The temporary restraining order (TRO) was signed by federal Judge T. Kent Wetherell of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida after a request by Florida’s Attorney General Ashley Moody. The TRO lasts up to 14 days and says:
DHS is enjoined from implementing or enforcing the parole policy contained in the May 10, 2023, Memorandum from U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, titled “Policy on Parole with Conditions in Limited Circumstances Prior to Issuance of a Charging Document (Parole with Conditions).
“A TRO is an extraordinary measure that preserves the status quo while a federal trial judge is determining whether to issue a preliminary injunction, or PI,” explained Breitbart News senior legal contributor Ken Klukowski.
“A PI then lasts all the way until a final judgment in a lawsuit, though in this case the Biden administration will promptly take the PI to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta. This order would stay in place during that time.”
The impact of the court decision is unclear. Biden’s border chief — Alejandro Mayorkas — seems determined to admit a huge number of job-seeking migrants. For example, Mayorkas may try to divert the migration through other questionable legal loopholes or announce that the U.S. superpower does not have the funds to detain the migrants.
“This is a harmful ruling that will result in unsafe overcrowding at C.B.P. facilities and undercut our ability to efficiently process and remove migrants, and risks creating dangerous conditions for Border Patrol agents and migrants,” the agency said in a statement to the New York Times.
More than 10,000 migrants have crossed the border on each of the last three days.
Many more are waiting in Mexico to walk through the border into Americans’ neighborhoods and workplaces.
The judge scoffed at the administration’s claim that his TRO would produce chaos at the border:
the Court fails to see a material difference between what [the border agency] will be doing under the challenged policy and what it claims that it would have to do if the policy was enjoined, because in both instances, aliens are being released into the country on an expedited basis without being placed in removal proceedings and with little to no vetting and no monitoring
In March, Wetherell blocked a very similar catch-and-release policy, dubbed “Parole + ATD.” The ATD term refers to “Alternatives to Detention” and it was being used by Mayorkas to dodge the federal law that requires him to detain asylum-seeking migrants until their requests are decided.
The federal government’s policy of catch-and-release has allowed at least seven million migrants to reach the United States since 2011. The policy enables migrants to hire smugglers by first mortgaging their farms and homes, and then quickly pay down the high-interest debts with wages earned at U.S. workplaces. If migrants were not released at the border, they could not repay the smuggling fees, and likely would not try to reach the United States.
In a preliminary statement on May 11, the judge declared that Mayorkas’ new “Parole With Conditions” catch-and-release policy is:
Strikingly similar to the Parole+ATD policy vacated in Florida in both its purpose (reducing overcrowding at border patrol facilities) and operation (by releasing aliens into the country without first at least issuing a charging document on the condition that they report to ICE within a specified period, despite having no real way to assess whether the alien is a public safety threat unless the alien self-reports his or her home-country criminal history).
The Washington Post described the new policy:
A memo issued Wednesday by Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz authorized supervisors in overcrowded areas to quickly release migrants using an authority he called “Parole with Conditions.” Migrants will be vetted and directed to report to U.S. immigration authorities in their destination cities within 60 days.
According to the Ortiz memo, “the decision to parole a noncitizen must still be made on a case-by-case individualized basis, examining all the facts and circumstances at the time of the noncitizen’s inspection, and only if there is an urgent humanitarian reason, such as ensuring the safety, health and security of the individual noncitizen, or significant public benefit justifying parole.”
Mayorkas is a Cuban-born, pro-migration zealot who says he is aligned with pro-migration advocates. “I am, to a great extent, aligned with the expectations” of the immigrant community, Mayorkas told an audience at the Aspen Institute on July 2022.
In a midnight tweet about the border, Mayorkas ignored the judge’s order as he directed migrants to use the “legal pathways” that he has cut in the border, including the asylum loophole that will soon be judged by the Supreme Court:
It is not clear if Biden has a firm grasp over Mayorkas’ actions. But Mayorkas does have solid backing from the White House’s West Coast wing of wealthy business investors.
Since January 2021, Biden’s deputies have been making many decisions to help open the border to many migrants.
For example, Biden’s top deputies have declined to use United States economic power to make Mexico take back migrants that it lets reach the U.S. border. Instead, officials have penned deals with Mexico that limit the monthly number of migrants that can be sent into Mexico. That policy has effectively given Mexico the power to cause problems for Biden by steering large columns of migrants to unguarded sections along the border — just as they sent many Haitians to Del Rio in September 2021.
Mayorkas dismisses criticism of his catch-and-release policy. “Will you be on shaky legal ground though with mass releases?” a reporter asked Mayorkas on May 11. Mayorkas responded:
Releases of individuals subject to immigration enforcement proceedings is not something particular to this administration … We implement our operations in conjunction with the Department of Justice, and we have confidence in the lawfulness of our actions.
He has also asked Congress to reduce his agency’s ability to temporarily detain migrants. He and his officials have also spent their federal funding on buses and shelters for migrants instead of using the funds to construct temporary shelters that would be useful to contain many migrants.
Mayorkas has repeatedly argued that Americans’ economic and civic interests are subordinate to his goal of converting Americans’ homeland into a “Nation of Immigrants.” On May 11, for example, Breitbart News asked Mayorkas about the civic impact of his maximum-migration policies at a time of sliding wages, rising rents, and expanding civic chaos:
BBN: How do Americans gain from the immigration paths you are opening, sir? No [journalists] ever asks, “Do Americans gain from all the immigrants who you bring in — [even though] wages get pushed down, rents get pushed up.” Mayorkas: Sir, we are a nation of immigrants. And we are a nation of laws. Individuals who qualify for relief under our laws have a basis to remain in the United States. The contributions of immigrants to this country is quite clear.