Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is seeking a temporary restraining order to stave off the mass release of migrants in the United States as Title 42 expires, arguing that the new policy is “materially identical” to the policy a federal judge blocked earlier this year.
Moody claims in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida that Homeland Security’s plan to release migrants onto the streets when Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and NGOs are overstretched is illegal and mimics a “parole + ATD” prohibited by a federal judge in March.
Under this policy, immigrants were paroled into the United States and enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program.
A federal judge accused the government of turning the Southwest border into an insignificant line in the sand and only slightly better than a “speedbump” for aliens wanting to flood the country.
But now that Title 42, the public health order which enabled the rapid deportation of immigrants at the southern border because of the COVID-19 pandemic, expired, surging immigration has resurfaced, overwhelming officials.
Earlier in the week, reports surfaced about D.C. officials authorizing all Border Patrol agents to begin “safe” mass releases of migrants on city streets if civilian agencies lack the ability to detain them.
However, a spokesperson for the DHS said on Thursday (May 11) that reports suggesting the CBP was encouraging the mass release of Migrants is “categorically false.”
Instead, the spokesperson insisted CBP is “stepping up enforcement actions” by deploying 24,000 border patrol agents, troops, contractors, and judges to the border and relayed an ICE announcement that families attempting to cross the border unlawfully will be subject to “expedited removal proceedings… GPS monitoring, and removed within 30 days if they don’t have a legal basis to remain.”
