Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration for ignoring immigration law that requires the federal government to arrest, detain and deport illegal immigrants.
The lawsuit argued that the Biden administration's immigration policy exceeds the authority of the Department of Homeland Security, is arbitrary and capricious, illegally bypassed notice and public commenting and is unconstitutional, Just the News reports.
The Republican attorneys general of Florida and Georgia joined the lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of Alabama.
The lawsuit named DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus, Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tae Johnson, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ur Jaddou, their respective agencies, and the federal government as defendants.
“The Biden administration cannot ignore the law, nor should it place American lives in jeopardy by allowing criminal aliens to escape the long arm of justice,” Marshall said in a statement.
The attorneys general are asking the court to nullify the policy, and permanently prohibit DHS, CBP, ICE and CIS from following it.
They’re seeking a permanent injunction to end “the Biden Administration’s wholesale abdication of its statutory duties.”
Doing so will “prevent the irreparable harm caused by the unlawful release of convicted criminals into their communities,” they argue.
“For more than three decades, a bipartisan majority of Congress has made law that the Executive Branch should arrest, detain, and remove all felon criminal aliens,” Marshall said. “Congress was justifiably concerned that deportable criminal aliens who are not detained continue to engage in crime and fail to appear for their removal proceedings in large numbers.”
“Congress intended that those arrested and ordered removed by an immigration judge were actually deported,” he added. “What’s more, officials in previous administrations of both political parties have agreed that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has to prioritize the removal of criminal aliens, and the United States Supreme Court has held that immigration officials ‘must arrest those aliens guilty of a predicate offense.’”
