Texas Moves to Restore Trump’s COVID Expulsions

June 23, 2021

IRLI represents state in lawsuit against Biden administration

WASHINGTON—Today the State of Texas, in its lawsuit against the Biden administration’s COVID-19 border policies, asked the court to grant a preliminary injunction reversing these policies, which are causing an influx of illegal aliens infected with COVID into Texas and the United States. This influx imperils both the public health and the economic recovery of that state and the nation. The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) represents the state as Outside Counsel in the case.

The brief filed today shows in detail how a raft of Biden administrative actions—each a sharp departure from previous Trump policies—has resulted in a surge of COVID-infected illegal aliens into the United States and Texas, endangering public health and straining the resources of Texas.

Each one of the actions that cause this influx—such as the policy of releasing unaccompanied children and families after putting them in crowded detention settings where COVID can spread—is unlawful as contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious (meaning unexplained and irrational), procedurally invalid (meaning no public notice and opportunity to comment were provided), or in violation of the Take Care Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The brief also explains why the harm Texas faces is serious and irreparable, and why the relief Texas seeks—a return to the previous Trump policies—is in the public interest; what is at stake is nothing less than the nation’s recovery from the pandemic.

“A factor in whether to grant a preliminary injunction is the public interest,” explained Christopher Hajec, director of litigation for IRLI. “Here, the public interest is resoundingly in favor of the prior Trump policies, not Biden’s inexplicable reversal of them, which threatens to restart the pandemic and devastate the economy and the lives of private citizens all over again. Amazingly, the administration did not even consider the effects of its actions on the public in Texas or anywhere else. The court must consider them, though, and has no basis to conclude that the public will be harmed if the administration is ordered to do its duty and protect America.”

“Again and again, this administration has told us how dire the COVID crisis is, and how it is by no means over,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “It can hardly claim now that causing an influx of infected aliens into Texas and elsewhere in the nation is not a problem. In fact, the situation caused by the administration’s engineered border surge is what is dire, for this and many other reasons. At this point, only the courts can reverse the actions behind that surge, and we will continue to work to bring that result about.”

The case is Texas v. Biden, No. 4:21-cv-00579-P (N.D. Tex.).