Proponents of common-sense immigration reform won a rare but crucial victory when district court Judge Trevor McFadden ruled that the Center for Immigration Studies’ lawsuit, Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform et al, vs. Department of Homeland Security et al, can proceed.Â
At issue is the Biden/Harris White House administration’s — as well as past administrations’ — abject failure to conduct an environmental analysis as required by the National Environmental Policy Act’s guidelines. Since 2021, Biden and Harris have opened the border, resulting in millions of foreign nationals entering the interior.
NEPA’s back story began in March 1969 when President Richard Nixon traveled to Santa Barbara to witness the consequences of an oil spill that spewed out between 3.4 million and 4.2 million gallons of crude oil onto Santa Barbara County beaches.
Nixon told reporters, “… the beauty and the natural resources that are so important to any kind of society that we want for the future. I don’t think we have paid enough attention to this . . . We are going to do a better job than we have done in the past.”
Nixon, because of his Santa Barbara experience, left behind a strong environmental legacy that included the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act Extension, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and NEPA.
Simply defined, NEPA requires all federal agencies to evaluate the environmental impacts of their major actions.
Often referred to as the nation’s environmental Magna Carta, NEPA’s intention is to ensure that federal decisions that affect the human environment are made in good faith and in full view of the public.
Ergo, NEPA requires federal agencies, in the case at hand, to study the effect of open border immigration practices and to allow public comment before putting laws into effect that might dramatically increase population and are therefore injurious to the natural environment.
Several weeks ago, at a bench trial, Julie Axelrod, the Center for Immigration Studies’ director of litigation, successfully argued that out-of-control immigration, and the significant population increases and environmental damage that accompany it, has a detrimental effect on Americans’ lives.
Summarizing the bench trial, held on July 31 and Aug. 1, Axelrod wrote that CIS called as expert witnesses on causation former Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan and former Chief of the Border Patrol Rodney Scott.
While DHS illogically attempted to disqualify both witnesses as not credible experts on border security, the court demurred and found both to be qualified. The witnesses explained how the wall and the Remain in Mexico policy were the critical twin pillars in their border security strategy, and whose abrupt termination at the Biden/Harris’ administration’s onset, indubitably precipitated the ongoing border crisis.
Axelrod’s conclusion: DHS is legally bound to obey NEPA.
The multiple amnesties and border security laws have been, at best, loosely enforced or, at worst, criminally disregarded, and have led to tens of millions of illegal aliens admitted in the six-plus decades since President Nixon signed NEPA.
DHS has never conducted the statutorily mandated environmental impact study before implementing its immigration agenda. Furthermore, DHS has never undertaken a NEPA study after any of its population-expansive actions, at least not one shared with the public.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, an experienced immigration lawyer, knows that his agency must comply with NEPA’s terms but, like so many in the Biden/Harris administration, has fearlessly disobeyed established laws.
Politically correct environmentalists who question whether open borders have detrimental effects on limited natural resources should see the images of the more than 12,000 Haitians awaiting CBP processing in a makeshift camp under Texas’ Del Rio Bridge. Similar scenes of huge gatherings of illegal aliens either heading for the border or debarking in major cities from busses have played out during Biden/Harris’ three- and three-quarter years in the Executive Branch.
In 2021, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality estimated that each border crosser leaves approximately 6 to 8 pounds of trash in the desert during his journey. Include other border states and add three years of greenlighting millions of illegal aliens, and the trash total would be, according to the report’s co-author Bruce Westerman, chair of the Committee on Natural Resources, “staggering.”
Despite the tons of trash that illegal aliens strew across the Southwest, the Sierra Club and other prominent environmental groups have abandoned, as Axelrod noted, what should be their principal mission—protecting and conserving flora and fauna.
CIS and Axelrod’s victory is the first step in securing Americans’ right to have their surroundings protected from Biden/Harris’ reckless and illegal immigration agenda. The court found that CIS had proved standing.
Judge McFadden concluded: “Presidential administrations enjoy significant discretion in the enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws and protection of our borders. But this latitude does not license violations of other laws.”
The case will now move forward to determine appropriate remedies, with briefings scheduled for later this year. Axelrod urged future public engagement and hearings to assess how immigration affects local communities. Urban sprawl and the pressure put on public services like schools, hospitals and police departments are the most obvious and drain local budgets.
Overcoming years of criminal negligence that subverts sovereignty is an uphill climb, but the arduous journey has started.
Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years.
