President Joe Biden’s attempt to crack down on illegal immigration is already being leveraged in court by administration critics who favor an even tougher approach at the southern border, Politico reports. A lawyer for the state of Texas, which is fighting to maintain concertina wire along a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border, argued in court Thursday that Biden’s sweeping executive order to suspend the right to make asylum claims undercuts previous administration legal arguments in a suit brought by Gov. Greg Abbott.
Texas Solicitor General Aaron Nielson told a panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that Biden’s action, which prohibits most migrants from being permitted to claim asylum when certain conditions are met, was “flatly contrary” to legal arguments the Justice Department previously offered in the case. “They told the district court and this court and the Supreme Court, essentially the toehold theory: If you get one toe into the United States, you are entitled to the asylum process. That is not consistent with what the president said two days ago, that … they can turn off the asylum process, if too many people are trying to come into the country,” Nielsen said during the court session in New Orleans. But Justice Department attorney Melissa Patterson said the Texas lawyer’s claims about Biden’s new policy were inaccurate and that it does not completely foreclose asylum proceedings for everyone who is encountered by the Border Patrol after the daily quota is exceeded. “It imposed a limitation on eligibility. It’s going to be harder to get it–to get asylum for a lot of folks, but you still get to apply, you still get to be processed,” Patterson said.