Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration on Thursday to challenge new rules that he claims unlawfully change asylum and parole procedures at the border.
The lawsuit is Paxton’s 11th immigration-related lawsuit against the Biden administration.
“I protested the proposed version of these rules back in October 2021, and, unsurprisingly, Biden found a way to make it worse, so I’m suing,” Paxton said in a statement.
“The last thing Texas needs is for this Administration to make it easier for illegal aliens to enter the U.S. and obtain asylum through false claims and less oversight. We know what’s going to happen when the rule goes into effect in May 2022: wave upon wave of illegal aliens claiming ‘asylum.’ It’s true that our immigration system is extremely backlogged. But the answer is to secure the border, not overwhelm it even more by enacting cheap, easy incentives for illegal aliens to get into the United States,” he added.
The complaint aims to stop a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy that would change the processing system for immigrants who claim fear of persecution in their home nation. The rule change would move the handling of the cases from immigration judges to asylum officers.
The current rule change is set to go into effect on May 29.
The planned transfer of power would lead to an upending of the current system of dealing with asylum cases at the border, according to the complaint.
“The Interim Rule transfers significant authority from immigration judges to asylum officers, grants those asylum officers significant additional authority, limits immigration-judge review to denials of applications, and upends the entire adjudicatory system to the benefit of aliens,” the lawsuit states.
Paxton also took to Twitter to criticize the Biden administration’s latest border policy change.
“The last thing TX needs is Biden to make it easy for aliens to break into USA through false claims. We know what’ll happen when the rule goes into effect: new waves of illegals claiming ‘asylum.’ I’m suing to stop it,” he tweeted on Thursday.
Last week, Paxton led a legal challenge that included the attorneys general of 21 Republican-led states in an effort to block the Biden administration from ending Title 42.
“The Biden Administration has made one disastrous border decision after another, and I’ve sued him at every turn,” Paxton wrote. “But his new plan to rescind Title 42 is the most consequential yet. Without Title 42, hundreds of thousands more illegal aliens will flood Texas every month—even more than have been pouring over in the past year.”
On Wednesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the end of Title 42 before May 23. Another hearing is set for May 13.