Not only has the Biden administration faced criticism for its lax immigration law enforcement, including a low rate of deportations, but a new lawsuit claims that the White House has not been forthcoming about its plan to allow previously deported migrants to re-enter the United States.
According to the complaint recently filed by the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the Biden administration was not forthcoming about its 2021 plan to allow undocumented migrants who had been deported following criminal charges in the United States to return.
The Biden administration launched an initiative to find deported U.S. veterans and bring them and their families back to United States, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Veteran Affairs announced today.https://t.co/pkjss6Ald3
— Axios (@axios) July 3, 2021
Citing the policy’s stipulation that only those migrants who served in the U.S. military could qualify, IRLI Executive Director Dale Wilcox accused the White House of “exploiting the American people’s support of military veterans to allow more potentially dangerous aliens to stay.”
He went on to assert that the current administration “has made clear its desire to keep criminal aliens in the country” and “is ignoring its legal obligation” to provide transparency regarding this controversial program.
The organization filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Homeland Security in April seeking “all documentation and policies” related to the program, including information regarding specific cases in which previously deported individuals were allowed to return to the U.S.
Although the DHS confirmed in a subsequent statement that it had received the request, it has not granted access to the information nor has it indicated whether it plans to do so.
“We will pursue this case so our citizens can know the truth about yet another Biden administration effort that goes against their interests,” Wilcox added.
IRLI Director of Investigations Matt O’Brien also released a statement asserting that the organization “would love to know why DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services think it’s appropriate to launch a special amnesty, by executive fiat, that gives foreign criminals special treatment merely because they served briefly in our military services.”
O’Brien pointed out that the White House “does not have any power to create new immigration programs without congressional authorization,” adding that “we don’t give U.S. citizens who commit felonies a free pass simply because they are veterans.”
