A federal judge on Wednesday vacated a Biden administration policy that released prospective asylees at the U.S.-Mexico border rather than detaining them.
Judge T. Kent Wetherell, who was nominated by former President Trump, ruled that the policy, which its Republican critics condemned as “catch and release,” violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and tore into the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border.
“The evidence establishes that Defendants have effectively turned the Southwest Border into a meaningless line in the sand and little more than a speedbump for aliens flooding into the country by prioritizing ‘alternatives to detention’ over actual detention and by releasing more than a million aliens into the country — on ‘parole’ or pursuant to the exercise of ‘prosecutorial discretion’ under a wholly inapplicable statute — without even initiating removal proceedings,” Wetherell ruled.
The Biden administration in 2021 in implementing the policy, which released many migrants into the country as they awaited immigration proceedings, cited a need to relieve overcrowding in detention facilities amid the pandemic.