One lawsuit stems from a court order from a Florida federal judge handed down late Thursday barring DHS from releasing migrants into the U.S. with instructions to report to immigration officials at a later time to start removal proceedings, according to Blas Nuñez-Neto, assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at DHS. The Biden administration’s concerns are for overcrowding in detention centers, but crossings have not continued to increase as anticipated.
In addition to the litigation in Florida, the American Civil Liberties Union and other immigrant rights groups filed an updated complaint late Thursday seeking to block the Biden administration’s new rule limiting asylum at the southern and maritime borders. The challenged rule presumes non-Mexican migrants arriving in between ports of entry or at maritime borders are ineligible for asylum if they did not seek and get denied protection in a third country on the way to the southern or maritime U.S. borders. The rule also requires noncitizens to snag limited appointments through the CBP One app to arrive at a port of entry.
The ACLU said in its complaint the rule doesn’t differ significantly from Trump-era asylum policies barring asylum for migrants entering in between ports of entry and requiring noncitizens to seek safe haven in a country they transited through to get to the U.S. border that courts found were unlawful.
Nuñez-Neto addressed the suit briefly Friday, saying only that the administration believes the Biden administration’s asylum rule is within its statutory authority.