Federal Judge T. Kent Wetherell II, of the Northern District of Florida and appointed by former President Donald Trump, determined to block the parole of migrants in custody without having to face a hearing before an immigration judge.
The magistrate imposed this brake for at least two weeks a few hours after the end of Title 42, the sanitary measure that allowed the expulsion of migrants.
The policy was outlined in a Border Patrol memo that calls for allowing immigrants into the country on parole, a process usually reserved for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” This can happen, for example, if the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) office is facing overcrowding.
Title 42 has been used since March 2020 by the Trump and Biden administrations to quickly return millions of migrants at the southern border due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the end of the order coinciding with the end of the national coronavirus emergency, migrants were flocking to the border Thursday night in hopes that it will make it easier for them to be admitted to the United States.
“Over the last seven days, CBP has averaged more than 8,750 encounters per day. This is more than double the average daily encounters of 4,284 in May 2019, the highest since that year.
“Even with significant staff across the SWB, significant detention needs interagency resources that support the effort. This situation requires urgent action,” says a memo from Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, this time filed by the prosecution before the judge after media reports emerged about the planned releases, arguing that the policy was “materially identical” to a “probation” policy blocked by the same judge in March.
Judge Wetherell agreed with that assessment in his order: “The Biden administration did absolutely nothing to prepare for that crisis. Just yesterday, he issued the conditional parole mass release policy, which is virtually identical to the policy that a federal judge has already struck down. These actions demonstrate a startling combination of incompetence and bad faith. I am pleased that a federal court understood the situation and acted appropriately.”
The judge has scheduled a preliminary injunction hearing for May 19.
A Homeland Security spokesperson told Fox News that “reports that mass releases of migrants were being allowed or encouraged were categorically false.”
