Matt Bush, FISM News
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the Biden administration claiming that the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) app, CBP One, is actually encouraging illegal immigration rather than trying to stop it.
The Biden administration proposed a rule in January that would require migrants to claim asylum in a country that they traveled through on their way to America. If they failed to do so, according to the rule, they would not be eligible for asylum in America.
The rule was meant to help lessen the impact of the expiration of Title 42, which ended on May 11. In the run-up to May 11, according to the New York Post, CBP officials saw over 10,000 people per day turn themselves over leaving holding facilities over capacity.
While that number has dropped from 10,000 to 4,000, even the lower number of migrant encounters per day would shatter the record of 2.3 million encounters in FY 2022.
Immigration and border patrol are primarily federal issues, which means it is up to the Biden administration and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas to fix the issues being faced there.
That is why Biden proposed the asylum rule, to make it more difficult for migrants to cross the southern border and to give CBP agents the legal ability to keep out people who are trying to cross illegally.
The CBP One app, however, has taken all of the power out of the asylum rule.
According to Fox News,
DHS has said the presumption of ineligibility for asylum will not apply if the migrant presents themselves at a port of entry having used the CBP One app to schedule an appointment. It also offers an exemption to the ineligibility presumption if it was not possible to access the app due to ‘extenuating circumstances, significant technical failure, or other applicable exception.
The Biden asylum rule may have had some effect on the number of people entering the country illegally, until the app is taken into account. If a migrant has scheduled an appointment on the app, tried to schedule an appointment on the app, could not use the app because they do not have access to it, or “any other applicable exception,” then the asylum rule no longer applies.
As Paxton said in a statement regarding the app, it is “illegally pre-approving more foreign aliens to enter the country and go where they please once they arrive.”
The opening paragraph of the lawsuit explains Paxton’s case:
In a farcical attempt to address the invasion of illegal aliens across the southern border following the end of Title 42, the Biden Administration published a new Final Rule inviting migrants to download an app to schedule a convenient time and place to cross the border illegally. Neither the app nor the border patrol officers at the southern border ask if the illegal aliens are seeking asylum, nor do they validate any claim for protection. The Biden Administration is inviting tens of thousands of aliens into Texas, releasing them into the country, and inflicting serious costs on the State of Texas. The Biden Administration’s attempt to manage the southern border by app does not meet even the lowest expectation of competency and runs afoul of the laws Congress passed to regulate immigration, and the Final Rule should be enjoined.”
This is the one thing that Biden has done to try to combat the expiration of Title 42, making it clear that the goal is not to keep the border closed to illegal immigrants, but to continue what Mayorkas called the “largest expansion of legal pathways for protection in decades.”