With Title 42 Expiring At Midnight, DeSantis' Attorney General Takes Last Minute Legal Action Against Biden Administration

With the looming expiration of Title 42, Florida's Attorney General Ashley Moody is filing a lawsuit against the Biden administration seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the masses of migrants from pouring into the state.

Moody submitted a filing within the Northern District of Florida'a U.S. District Court arguing that the Department of Homeland Security plan, to release migrants into the street if the Customs and Border Protection and NGOs become over capacitated, is unlawful in a similar vein to the “Parole + ATD” policy enjoined by a federal judge in March, per Fox News. 

The “Parole + ATD” policy was a program that would allow people entering the United States together to be paroled into the country while being placed in an alternative to detention, per Immigration Impact. The alternative to detention usually was being tracked by their phone by using an app called SmartLINK. 

Florida sued the federal government in 2021 over border policies, later adding the “Parole + ATD” program to the lawsuit. They specifically looked to fight against the ambiguous “no detention” policy. The court ultimately ruled in favor of Florida, with the judge saying the government “effectively turned the Southwest border into a meaningless line in the sand and little more than a speed bump for aliens flooding into the country,” and the policy was abandoned. 

Moody is arguing that the new plan from the Biden admin is “materially identical to Parole + ATD” since it doesn’t set forth any plan to prevent migrants from coming into the country, nor detaining them. Moody has called the “plan” by the Biden admin both “unlawful” and “dangerous.” 

"The gall of Biden to thumb his nose at a federal court order and proceed with an unlawful plan to allow what amounts to an invasion at our Southwest Border is not only unprecedented, it is dangerous," Moody stated. "We have blown the whistle on Biden every step along his path to illegally dismantle our nation’s border security system—and even as the clock ticks down to the end of Title 42 we are taking action to force this administration to follow the law, secure the border and protect the American people."

The state has argued that since some of the tens of thousands of migrants will undoubtedly make their way to Florida, the state is affected by the move and can challenge it. 

A DHS spokesperson has already confirmed the policy to be true, stating, "As Republican and Democratic administrations alike have done in the past to protect the safety and security of Border Patrol agents and migrants in the event of severe overcrowding conditions, U.S. Border Patrol sectors may consider releasing certain migrants who have undergone strict national security and public safety vetting to continue their immigration processes. This may include processing migrants for parole to reduce the amount of time they spend in custody." 

The judge who blocked the order, Judge T. Kent Wetherell, said in an order responding to the suit filed by Moody that the motion “needs to be resolved sooner rather than later.”

The lack of a real plan undoubtedly poses a major threat to every state in the Union, and unless something is done soon, the problem is looking to get much worse.