Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody announced this week she is bringing a multi-state action against President Joe Biden for failing to enforce federal immigration law.
The attorneys general of Alabama and Georgia joined Moody in a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief, arguing that the president is failing to perform the duties required by Congress by continuing to operate under unlawful immigration enforcement priorities. Under these priorities, the Biden administration is refusing to detain and deport criminals in the country illegally—directly contrary to federal law, the attorneys general insisted.
“The Biden administration’s refusal to deport criminals here illegally after they complete their sentences makes us all less safe. Biden’s lax immigration policies are exacerbating the opioid crisis, facilitating human trafficking and further jeopardizing overall public safety. As Attorney General, I will continue fighting these unlawful immigration policies until the president is forced to do his job and secure the southwest border,” Moody said.
“The immigration priorities, as is nearly every immigration policy from the Biden administration, are designed to weaken border security. Through multiple acts of legislation, Congress instructed the executive branch to arrest, detain and remove criminal aliens due to concerns that those who are not detained continue to engage in crime and fail to appear for removal proceedings,” Moody’s office insisted.
“The Biden administration seeks to ‘dispense with’ these acts of Congress. It claims the discretion to decide…which aliens should be arrested, detained and removed, even if its policy preferences directly conflict with the clear commands of Congress. And it has used the claimed discretion to allow illegal immigrants guilty of drug trafficking, burglary and other serious crimes to return to our communities upon release from state custody rather than arresting and removing them as federal law requires,” Moody noted in the compliant.
Thus, Florida argues that Biden’s new immigration priorities are contrary to law because, as the Supreme Court has held, immigration officials ‘must arrest those aliens guilty of a predicate offense,’” Moody’s office noted. “The policy is also arbitrary and capricious. The Biden administration displayed no awareness that the memo changes a longstanding position of the federal government, nor does the memo consider the substantial costs imposed on the states by ignoring the law.
The complaint asks the court to hold the immigration priorities unlawful, issue permanent injunctive relief prohibiting the Biden administration from enforcing the policy and compel the Department of Homeland Security to comply with the law.
The states of Alabama and Georgia are joining Florida in the action that is filed in the United States District Court in the Northern District of Alabama.
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