(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton exposed a regulatory change by the Department of Homeland Security that shifted deportation powers away from immigration judges to bureaucrats, and allowed for multiple ways to delay and appeal the process, Just the News reported.
“The Interim Rule sets forth all kinds of exceptions from the procedures and timelines in the new regulations, generally always inuring to the alien’s benefit,” Paxton wrote in his lawsuit challenging the regulations.
“In summary, the Interim Rule transfers significant authority from immigration judges to asylum officers, grants those asylum officers significant additional authority, limits immigration-judge review to denials of applications, and upends the entire adjudicatory system to the benefit of aliens,” the suit added.
The majority of asylum cases that reach an immigration judge are rejected, falling from 71% under the Trump administration to 63% in the current regime.
The aliens who do not receive asylum are quickly returned to their country of origin.
Biden’s administration has allowed bureaucrats working for the Customs and Immigration Service to bypass immigration judges and take action to delay or circumvent removal.
Paxton’s lawsuit highlighted several of these changes, noting that “individuals subject to expedited removal and found to have a credible fear of persecution or torture would have their claims for asylum, withholding of removal … or Convention Against Torture … protection initially adjudicated by USCIS following a nonadversarial interview before an asylum officer.”
Immigrants who lose their court case can now appeal and be reconsidered under favorable conditions.
John Zadrozny, a former White House immigration adviser to President Trump, told Just the News the new rules have resulted in a circular process, meaning most aliens can simply stay in America for years while the paperwork gets shuffled around.
“What this rule basically does is it destroys expedited removal for all intents and purposes, and creates an endless loop of review that will prevent an alien from really ever being removed under the expedited removal process,” Zadrozny explained during an interview.
“We’re calling this the ‘Alien always wins rule,’ because that’s basically what it is: it’s designed to prevent them from [ever] getting a final negative adjudication” authorizing their removal from the country,” Zadrozny said.
This is Paxton’s 11th lawsuit against the Biden administration since 2021.
“The last thing Texas needs is for this Administration to make it easier for illegal aliens to enter the U.S. and obtain asylum through false claims and less oversight,” Paxton said.