{"id":24398,"date":"2021-04-14T17:02:53","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T21:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=24398"},"modified":"2021-04-14T17:04:12","modified_gmt":"2021-04-14T21:04:12","slug":"texas-missouri-sue-remain-in-mexico-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2021\/04\/14\/texas-missouri-sue-remain-in-mexico-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas and Missouri Sue Biden Administration to Reinstate Remain-in-Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
The attorneys general of Texas and Missouri, Ken Paxton (R) and Eric Schmitt (R), filed a lawsuit<\/a> against the Biden administration in an effort to force the federal government to reinstate the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). The MPP, colloquially referred to as Remain-in-Mexico, was a Trump-era policy that held asylum-seeking migrants in Mexico while their cases proceeded through the immigration court system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n MPP prevented the disastrous policy of catch and release,\nwhere Border Patrol apprehended asylum-seeking aliens and then simply released\nthem into the country with court date notice. Aliens could then \u2013 and often did\n– simply disappear into the interior of the country. President Donald Trump\ninstituted MPP as part of a broader set of executive actions that ended the\nspring and summer 2019 southern border crisis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite their overwhelming effectiveness at preventing\nborder surges and discouraging fraudulent asylum claims, Joe Biden quickly\nended the program upon becoming president. The result was disastrous. It helped\nspark a new border crisis that is quickly dwarfing the one in 2019. But unlike\nthe Trump administration, the Biden administration seemingly has zero plans to\ndo anything to stop it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Frustrated with the effects of the ongoing crisis on their states, Paxton and Schmitt filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration. They argue that the Biden administration acted arbitrarily and capriciously in ending the program. Specifically, they argue that the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act. They wrote in their filing<\/a> that: <\/p>\n\n\n\n The result of this arbitrary and\ncapricious decision has been a huge surge of Central American migrants,\nincluding thousands of unaccompanied minors, passing through Mexico in order to\nadvance meritless asylum claims at the U.S. border. By dismantling the MPP, the\nadministration has directly caused a massive uptick in illegal immigration\nthrough Central America, Mexico, and to the U.S. southern border.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The merits of the case seem strong. The Administrative\nProcedure Act (APA) requires the executive branch to exhaustively describe why\nthey issue certain orders or memoranda, and courts routinely struck down\nTrump-era orders due to that administration\u2019s failure to follow the APA. Given\nhow quickly the Biden administration ended MPP, it is highly likely that they\ndid not follow the APA to the full letter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n