Hearing set in Moody immigration fight

March 31, 2021

NSF Staff

A federal judge will hear arguments April 13 in an attempt by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to block immigration decisions by President Joe Biden’s administration. U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell scheduled a hearing on a request by Moody for a preliminary injunction. Moody filed a lawsuit March 8 alleging that moves by the Biden administration threaten public safety, with her arguments focused on memos issued Jan. 20 and Feb. 18 by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about immigration enforcement. “The Biden administration’s actions will allow criminal aliens to be released into and move freely in the state of Florida, and their resulting crime will cost the state millions of dollars on law enforcement, incarceration, and crime victim’s assistance,” said the 28-page lawsuit, filed in Tampa. “It will also cause unquantifiable harm to Florida’s citizenry and will force the state to expend its own law enforcement resources to pick up the slack.” But U.S. Department of Justice attorneys last week filed a 33-page response that argued the proposed preliminary injunction should be rejected and that the Biden administration has set immigration-enforcement priorities. “The Department of Homeland Security, like all executive agencies, must accomplish its mission while operating with finite resources,” the response said. “In fulfilling its charge to enforce U.S. immigration laws, it cannot arrest, detain, and remove all noncitizens unlawfully present in the United States. Thus, during every presidential administration, DHS invariably has had to make decisions over where it will dedicate its limited resources in order to further its objectives of national security, border security, and public safety.”