More Than A Dozen GOP States Sue Biden Admin Over Recent Border Policy, Claim It’s ‘Encouraging More Border Crossings’

Republican Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and more than a dozen other GOP-led states are suing the Biden administration over a recent policy to address an expected surge of illegal migrants at the southern border, according to a statement from his office.

The Biden administration rule Miyares is contesting was implemented to mitigate an expected surge of migrants at the southern border when Title 42, a Trump-era expulsion order, ended on May 11 which made migrants ineligible for asylum if they pass through another safe country before coming to the U.S. Miyares, however, argues that the rule has many exceptions that allow migrants to enter the country, including using a phone app to book entry appointments, claiming they face imminent danger in their home country and having their asylum request denied in another country, the lawsuit argues.

“The rebuttable presumption created by the Circumvention Rule is lawful. However, the exemptions to that rebuttable presumption are not. Nor are the unreasonably vague factors allowing aliens to rebut the presumption. The Circumvention Rule contains a severance provision stating ‘that any provision of this section held to be invalid or unenforceable by its terms, or as applied to any person or circumstance, should be construed so as to continue to give the maximum effect to the provision permitted by law.’ This Court should therefore declare the exceptions to the Circumvention Rule to be unlawful, vacate those exceptions, and enjoin Defendants from implementing them,” the lawsuit states.

Republican states, including Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming also joined the lawsuit.

“This plan proposed by the Biden Administration does little to deter illegal immigration, and, instead, provides the Cartels with a makeshift manual on how to circumvent and exploit our immigration regulations,” Miyares said in a statement.

“Encouraging more border crossings without congressional approval will merely worsen the chaos and tragedy taking place at the border, and promote further fentanyl and human trafficking that is tearing apart Virginia’s communities,” Miyares said.

In fiscal year 2022, Border Patrol recorded more than 2.2 million migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to federal data. Meanwhile, in the first seven months of fiscal year 2023, Border Patrol recorded more than 1.2 million migrant encounters at the southern border.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.