A Louisiana judge's ruling that Title 42 must stay in place, for now, is not only a victory for Texas and the United States but "more importantly, it's a victory for the rule of law," Texas State Rep. Brian Harrison, a former Health and Human Services (HHS) chief of staff under former President Donald Trump, told Newsmax on Monday.
"The United States is supposed to be a nation of borders, and it's supposed to be a nation of laws," the Texas Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "We know [President] Joe Biden doesn't want us to be a nation of borders. It's one of the few campaign promises he's kept. He's giving us open borders."
However, Biden also doesn't want the United States to be a nation of laws, Harrison said.
"Presidents in this country aren't able to act like kings or dictators," said Harrison. "They are supposed to follow the law when it comes to undoing consequential regulations, like the Title 42 order that we put in place during the Trump administration."
Title 42, a health order that keeps people with communicative diseases from coming into the United States, was used by the Trump administration to slow immigration numbers. The Biden administration had pushed to lift the order as of Monday, but last week, a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the administration from making the move. The administration is planning to appeal the ruling.
"This judge basically told him you can't completely disregard the just absolute devastation that undoing Title 42 would do to countless states that are suing you," said Harrison.
He noted that last month, there were more than 230,000 known illegal border crossings.
"That's record-shattering but by the administration's own math, if Title 42 goes away, we are going to have over a half-million crossings per month that we know about … if they get rid of this, this is going to unleash a tsunami of illegal immigration like we've never seen."
Harrison further noted that when he was in HHS during the Trump administration, there was a "good reason" to put Title 42 in place, but the Biden administration "does not and hasn't even bothered pretending to have a reasonable basis for taking the order down."
The judge in last week's ruling on the matter also noted that the Biden administration didn't consider the interests of states like Texas when ordering to lift Title 42, Harrison said.
"We're the first impacted, and he didn't even bother to take our considerations into account," he said. Harrison further commented that a "responsible president" would just walk away after the ruling to leave Title 42 in place, but Biden "has shown no interest in behaving responsibly."
"I would say to my friends and colleagues in the U.S. Congress, they need to stand up and assert themselves here," said Harrison. "Nothing is stopping Congress from today, right now, passing a bill that would make Title 42 permanent and end the drama between the executive branch and the legislative branch."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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