Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration for halting the Donald Trump era Remain in Mexico policy and on Monday, for the third time, a court rejected an attempt to end the program that kept asylum seekers south of the border while their cases were litigated.
“They’ve tried every other way to avoid having to follow federal law,” Paxton said, adding that Biden’s open border policies are hurting the American people.
“The restoration of the ‘Remain in Mexico’ program is a huge win for Texas!” Paxton said of the court’s decision. “This is one of the many lawsuits I have filed against the Biden administration.”
“I will continue to fight to restore safety and order along our southern border, making sure that this essential program is implemented in full compliance with the court’s orders,” Paxton said.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ended the program, officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols, on June 1, and later that month DHS allowed MPP participants whose cases had been terminated or who had previously been ordered removed to reschedule new hearings. By August, some 13,000 people in MPP had been allowed to pursue their court cases from inside the United States.
In April 2019 the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and later the Supreme Court rejected Biden’s move and on Monday a U.S. Appeals Court nixed the latest attempt to let more illegals into the United States.
Nevertheless, Paxton told Breitbart News he isn’t sure Biden and Mayorkas will obey the court order.
“It’s an open invitation — they said it from the beginning they will not deport you if you come here and they’ve proven that to be true,” Paxton said, adding that that is the reason illegal immigration has increased by 300 percent under Biden.
“And along with that, all the other bad things like human trafficking and drug cartels,” and the spread of coronavirus, Paxton said, because none of the illegal migrants making it inside the country are being tested or vaccinated.
“It’s a sad state for our constitutional government when you have a president that just says, ‘Look, I don’t follow federal law. I don’t follow the Constitution. I do what I want. And so I’m going to continue to do that,” Paxton said.
“It’s a travesty of justice,” Paxton said.
Breitbart News asked Paxton about Vice President Kamala Harris’s announcement on Monday that the White House has recruited American corporations to “invest” $1.2 billion in the economies of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador as a way to stop people from leaving those countries to come to the United States — to address what the Biden Administration claims are the “root causes” of illegal immigration from Central America.
“It’s frustrating because they should first help the people on the border who are citizens the United States and who are suffering, who are at greater risk of having harm done to their property or harm done to them or to their families,” Paxton said.
“It seems like if you cared about the American people, you would address that problem first, before you spend billions of dollars on Central American countries,” Paxton said.
“If [Biden] would do the job on the border, we could prevent a lot of the harm that’s happening to Americans,” Paxton said. “And clearly that’s not … that is not a priority. In fact, it seems to be the antithesis of what they’re actually trying to do.”
Paxton said Texas is doing what it can do to secure the border in that state, including building wall infrastructure. But border security is under federal jurisdiction so states are limited in actions they can take.
“At some point, hopefully, there’ll be some accountability, either at the ballot box or in court, hopefully, for these government officials that are not following the Constitution, that are not following federal law,” Paxton said.
An NBC affiliate reported that about 80 individuals had been deported since the program rebooted, but none from Central America.
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