HOUSTON (AP) – A federal judge on Tuesday afternoon banned President Joe Biden’s administration indefinitely from enforcing a 100-day moratorium on most deportations.
U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton issued a preliminary order requested by Texas, arguing that the moratorium violated federal law and risked imposing additional costs on the state.
Biden proposed the 100-day pause in deportations during his campaign as part of a broader review of immigration enforcement and an attempt to reverse former President Donald Trump’s priorities. Biden has proposed an immigration bill that would allow the legalization of some 11 million people living illegally in the U.S. It has also set other guidelines on who immigration and border agents should target for enforcement.
Tipton, appointed by Trump, initially decided on Jan. 26 that the moratorium violated federal law on administrative procedure and that the U.S. did not demonstrate why a deportation break was warranted. A temporary restraining order issued by the judge was due to expire on Tuesday.
Tipton’s sentence did not require the deportations to resume at their previous pace. Even without a moratorium, immigration agencies have a wide latitude when it comes to enforcing transfers and processing cases.
But in the days following his ruling, authorities deported 15 people to Jamaica and hundreds more to Central America. The Biden administration has also continued to expel immigrants under a separate lawsuit initiated by Trump officials, who invoked the public health law because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The legal fight to ban deportation is an early sign of Republican opposition to Biden’s immigration priorities, just as Democrats and pro-immigrant legal groups fought Trump’s proposals. Nearly four years before Tipton’s order, Trump signed a ban on travel from seven countries with predominantly Muslim populations that caused chaos at airports. Legal groups successfully sued to stop the implementation of the ban.
It was not immediately clear whether the Biden administration will appeal Tipton’s latest ruling. The Justice Department did not ask for the suspension of Tipton’s old temporary restraining order.