Florida AG files lawsuit against DHS for ‘unquestionably cynical’ post-Title 42 plans

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as the Title 42 immigration policy ends, calling the Biden administration’s response to a potential influx of migrants “unquestionably cynical.” 

“Today is May 10, the day before the Title 42 order expires, and the media reports that DHS plans to immediately restart the en masse parole of aliens at the Southwest Border,” Moody wrote in a Wednesday filing, asking a federal judge to postpone the policies, which she argued are “unquestionably cynical, in bad faith, and contrary to both the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the APA.”

“It is also, unfortunately, consistent with the game of whack-a-mole DHS has been playing with Florida and this Court for almost two years,” she added.

Moody filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, Pensacola Division. 

The attorney general argued that the administration’s new immigration plans run counter to a federal judge’s March ruling that vacated a similar policy. Moody on Thursday requested a temporary restraining order to prevent DHS from implementing the new parole policy. 

A judge ordered DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s team to respond by Thursday afternoon, but the defendants requested an extension until Friday afternoon.

“It is inconceivable that Defendants waited until yesterday to formulate this policy, particularly since they have known for quite some time that the Title 42 Order was going to expire tonight at midnight and that a surge of aliens would follow,” Moody argued.

Mayorkas’s team said that that “the Court should deny this request to limit the Executive’s authority to carry out a core Executive function, managing the border, particularly on an emergency basis without the benefit of full briefing on the eve of an expected dramatic increase in arrivals at the border.”

The pandemic-era Title 42 is expiring just before midnight Eastern on Thursday, reverting migrant processing back to the Title 8 process.

The Biden administration is preparing for an expected surge of migrants to the border as the immigration policies change — and rolled out a new rule requiring migrants to first seek asylum in another country before attempting to do so in the U.S.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed an immigration bill ahead of the policy’s expiration that, among other measures, suspends the licenses of employers who knowingly employ migrants without permanent legal status and provides $12 million for migrant relocation.