Attorney General Gentner Drummond is pushing back against a Biden-Harris Administration rule to allow illegal immigrants to remain where they are in the country while also affording them the possibility of employment and access to public benefits programs.
In an amicus brief filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Drummond and six other attorneys general expressed support for a lawsuit challenging the Biden-Harris administration’s “Parole-in-Place” (PIP) rule. This rule would allow over a million illegal aliens to remain in the United States and live as temporary legal residents until they can apply for permanent residency.
“The Biden-Harris administration’s ‘Parole-in-Place’ rule would greatly exacerbate the nation’s border crisis, which is already creating unprecedented criminal activity in Oklahoma,” said Drummond. “This misguided policy increases costs and administrative burdens for our state when the federal government should be working hard to decrease them. As Oklahoma’s chief law enforcement officer, I believe it is important to challenge this rule to protect the public safety as well as our resources. We must secure our communities.”
In August 2024, the Department of Homeland Security implemented the PIP rule, which only added fuel to the nation’s illegal immigration crisis. The program incentivizes more illegal immigration, sending an unmistakable signal that the U.S. is unwilling to enforce immigration laws.
“Defendants’ latest move is to rewrite immigration law to allow over a million illegal aliens to remain in the United State and live as temporary legal residents until they can apply for permanent residency,” the brief states. “Defendants do all that amid an ongoing immigration crisis that imposes significant costs on the States, including hundreds of millions of dollars in new expenses relating to law enforcement, education and healthcare programs.”
The PIP program exceeds the power granted to the executive branch by Congress in the Immigration and Nationality Act, which only authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security to parole inadmissible aliens on a “case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” PIP grants parole to millions of illegal immigrants with the stroke of a pen.
The state’s amicus brief comes while Oklahoma is fighting its own battle against the Biden-Harris Administration to uphold the state’s anti- illegal immigration law. Last month, Drummond asked the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a preliminary injunction that a federal judge issued only days before House Bill 4156 went into effect. The measure, which the Legislature passed at Drummond’s request, allows state and local law enforcement to arrest and incarcerate immigrants who are in Oklahoma illegally.
In addition to Oklahoma, the brief opposing the PIP program was joined by attorneys general from Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Utah and West Virginia.Read the brief here.
