Florida Set to Take Biden Administration to Trial over Immigration Parole Program 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis listens as Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody speaks during a
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Jordan Dixon-Hamilton

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is set to take President Joe Biden’s administration to trial in federal court over its planned expansion of the immigration parole system.

Florida’s lawsuit comes as the Biden administration expanded the federal parole system as part of its plan to expand “safe, orderly, and humane processing” for illegal aliens. This expansion would allow an additional 30,000 migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua to remain in the United States.

As Just the News reported:

Biden made the announcement after a record 68,044 Cubans and Nicaraguans and 6,232 Venezuelans were apprehended in November illegally entering the U.S., according to CBP data; and after more than 600,000 foreign nationals from all over the world were apprehended or evaded capture in November and December 2022 combined, and a record 3.3 million were apprehended in fiscal 2022.

Moody’s office claimed the state has “uncovered evidence of Biden ignoring public-safety immigration laws allowing more than 1 million unvetted, inadmissible immigrants into the interior.”

The upcoming trial “will once again show that the Biden administration is threatening Americans’ safety by intentionally weakening our nation’s border security,” Moody’s office continued.

“These policies harm Florida. The Biden administration is releasing tens of thousands of migrants at the border every month,” attorneys in Moody’s office wrote in an amended version of the lawsuit that was filed in August. “Many of these migrants are arriving or will arrive in Florida, harming the state’s quasi-sovereign interests and forcing it to incur millions of dollars in expenses.”

In a statement on Thursday, Moody criticized Biden’s “irresponsible” immigration policy for putting “Americans at risk.”

Moody said:

Since President Biden took office, he has intentionally dismantled public-safety immigration structures, allowing chaos to reign at our nation’s Southwest Border, and letting unvetted, inadmissible immigrants — along with dangerous individuals and deadly drugs like fentanyl — into our country. Biden’s actions are beyond irresponsible and put Americans at risk. Now, because of our litigation, the president must defend his reckless actions and refusal to follow the law in a federal courtroom.

However, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys argued in an October filing that the federal government has discretion over immigration policies and claimed that Florida is asking U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II to “second-guess discretionary decisions by the Department of Homeland Security about how to enforce immigration law most effectively and efficiently.”

“This court should decline Florida’s invitation to undermine the principles of federalism and separation of powers upon which the U.S. constitutional system is based,” the DOJ filing continued.

Judge Wetherell of the Northern District of Florida Pensacola Division is scheduled to begin the trial on Monday.

The case is Florida v. United States, No. 3:21-cv-1066-TKW-ZCB, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida.

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