Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody successfully convinced a judge that the Biden administration’s catch-and-release program for illegal immigrants needed to be stopped — only to have the administration ignore the ruling.
As The Free Press reported on Friday, at Moody’s request, U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell issued a temporary restraining order to block the administration from cutting loose illegal immigrants detained after the expiration of Title 42 on Thursday.
Title 42 is the federal law that allows the U.S. government to expel illegal immigrants without a hearing because of a public health emergency.
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Wetherell sided with Moody, a Republican, and grated the restraining order after determining that the Department of Homeland Security’s supposedly new policy for detainees was “materially indistinguishable” from one he ruled violated federal law in March.
Yet Moody’s victory was short-lived.
The Washington Times reported on Sunday that despite the court order, DHS “paroled” roughly 2,500 illegals caught at the border on Friday.
As the Times noted, “Wetherell’s order, which the Biden administration is appealing, was in effect Friday, and it’s unclear what authority the government was using for the new paroles.”
Neither DHS nor the Justice Department responded to requests for comment.
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The release of 2,500 people on Friday followed the release of 6,000 on Thursday before Title 42 ended.
The parole policy is supposed to be applied on a case-by-case basis and only in situations of urgent humanitarian need or if there is a significant public benefit. Historically, that meant someone requiring emergency medical treatment or who served as a witness in a criminal case.
“Under President Biden, however, it has become a secondary immigration system, with 1.5 million migrants admitted under parole since Oct. 1, 2021,” the Times reported.
Judge Wetherell had slammed the administration for that in March, saying its broad use of parole violated the law because it was meant to be exercised case by case.
While the judge was insistent that the government follow the law in dealing with a chaotic immigration situation it had in fact created, the White House was criticizing the judge.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday slammed Wetherell’s ruling calling it a political stunt.
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“The claims that CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) is allowing or encouraging mass release of migrants … is just categorically false,” Jean-Pierre said during a press briefing. “That is not what’s occurring. That is not what’s happening. And it is a harmful ruling, and the Department of Justice is going to fight it. That’s what we’re going to see. And we’re going to continue to use every tool that we have to make sure that we are dealing with this issue in a humane and orderly way.”
Both Moody and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have long criticized federal border policies and argued that undocumented immigrants coming into Florida create costs for services such as schools, health care and prisons.
In March, the Pensacola-based Wetherell also ruled that an earlier Biden administration immigration policy violated federal law. That policy was challenged by Florida.
Jean-Pierre accused Republican elected officials of “political stunts” and said, “they don’t want to solve this problem. They want to use it, again, as a campaign tool for them.”
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