By Bethany Blankley (The Center Square)
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody won another round against the Biden administration in federal court, this time in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
On Monday, the court ruled to uphold an injunction against the Department of Homeland Security’s parole program. The order was issued last month by a Florida federal district judge. DHS appealed the judge’s ruling and lost.
On May 8, U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell of the Pensacola Division in the Northern District of Florida ruled cleared DHS’s “Policy on Using Parole Plus Alternatives to Detention to Decompress Border Sites.” On May 16, he imposed the DHS memorandum “Pailed in Limited Circumstances Prior to Issuance of a Loading Document.”
The statement is the last of several in a court case filed by Moody on DHS plans to mass release foreign nationals who had entered the US illegally into local communities. DHS also partners with other federal agencies and non-governmental organizations to temporarily house and transport millions of people to U.S. cities across the country.
DHS appealed, asking the 11th Circuit to stay the lower court ruling. By a 2-1 vote, the judges of the Court of Appeals panel denied DHS’s request.
It involves a catch, release, and parole program implemented by DHS that Moody has sued, arguing that it is illegal.
The plan for DHS to release people en masse when the public health authority’s Title 42 ended on May 11 was first made public by Moody’s office as part of its lawsuit through a note obtained her office written by Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz who explains. Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol Chief Gloria Chavez also in Texas explained her sector’s plan to release people into local communities, according to a recording of a meeting she held with local law enforcement provided to The Center Square.
DHS claims that blocking its plan “undermines the executive branch’s constitutional and legal authority to carry out its immigration priorities and secure the border.” It also states that “the most immediate consequence” of the judge’s orders “is likely to be [the] overcrowding [of] CBP facilities amid increase in border encounters,” which would threaten the “health, safety and security” of USBP agents and illegal aliens. DHS, like Ortiz, alleges that overcrowded CBP facilities lead agents to release illegal aliens without adequate controls. In the “worst case scenario” it would be unable to release millions of people in the US, it argues, preventing it from apprehending illegal aliens entering the US illegally.
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Former Border Patrol chiefs claim this is what is already happening, as Border Patrol agents have been taken off the line to process people instead. They also claim that more than 7.5 million people have been apprehended or reported evading capture. No one knows how many escaped, who or where they are.
DHS’s arguments fell flat before the district and appellate judges who heard their case. The appellate courts ruled that DHS could not meet the “irreparable injury” factor to support its claim. They rejected the DHS motion “because DHS has failed to fulfill its duty to demonstrate that it will be irreparably harmed without a stay.
“Simply showing a ‘possibility of irreversible harm’ does not satisfy their request,” the judges wrote in their nine-page ruling. The court “will not determine irreparable damage on the basis of mere presumptions,” the judges said.
They also said DHS’s ability to assess future damage is uncertain at best. Given this track record, we take DHS’s latest claims of imminent disaster if it is not allowed to use any of the contested policies with any skepticism.”
On May 11, Wetherell promised Moody’s request for a temporary restraining order imposing DHS’s mass release policy on “Parole with Conditions”. The next day, he refused the Justice Department’s “borderline frivolous” motion to suspend his warrant.
On May 15, he denied an urgent request for a postponement, and on May 16, ordered DHS for another two weeks to implement his plan through a temporary restraining order. DHS appealed and the case was heard before the 11th Circuit, which denied his request on June 5.
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Wetherell has maintained that DHS’s policy is “the latest in a series of policies adopted by DHS over the past two years to expedite the release of aliens arriving in the country at the southwestern border, rather than detaining them until their immigration process has been completed, as required by 8 USC §1225(b).”
He also said, “If the allegations in the complaint and motion” filed by Moody were true after it was reported that DHS was planning to move forward with its release plan under a new name, “then it appears that DHS is preparing to to ignore the Court’s rulings.” injunction in Florida v. United States by implementing a new “parole” policy that, based on the DHS spokesperson’s description of the policy, sounds nearly identical to the Parole + ATD policy that left court in Florida .
It remains unclear whether DHS will ask the full 11th Circuit Court to hear its case or whether the full court will consider it.
Syndicated with permission from Center Square.