Since President Biden’s first week in office, Texas’s leaders have aggressively targeted his administration’s immigration agenda in the courts. Over the past four years, the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, and its attorney general, Ken Paxton, have strategically used litigation to block, halt, and render moot federal policies on interior enforcement and border security, while forcing officials to continue Trump-era practices well into the new administration’s first term.
From enforcement priorities, to a deportation moratorium, to programs meant to mitigate irregular migration, Texas has repeatedly turned to the courts as a tactic to derail Biden immigration policies. To maximize its chances of success, Paxton’s office has strategically filed lawsuits in specific federal court districts and divisions that improve the odds of a sympathetic judge, in what critics have labeled “judge shopping.”1 As a result, Texas has often been able to stall policy changes, foster confusion, and prevent the Biden administration from realizing its initial vision of a more humane, orderly system.
It’s not new for states to sue presidential administrations they disagree with over federal initiatives. Prior to the Biden administration, Texas challenged a host of U.S. policies, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).2 During the Trump administration, Democratic-governed states similarly targeted Trump administration immigration policies, including a travel ban on noncitizens from Muslim-majority countries and migrant family separations.3 But Texas’s ongoing success in disrupting or halting Biden administrative priorities on immigration stands out — especially as the Abbott administration and state legislature have aggressively enacted their own alternative immigration enforcement regime through Abbott’s signature initiative, Operation Lone Star.
This paper explores how Texas has used the courts to upend the Biden immigration agenda, with major ramifications for federal officials, human rights advocates, and immigrants themselves.
Enjoining the Deportation Moratorium
On January 20, 2021 — the day President Biden was inaugurated, and consistent with a key campaign promise — then-Acting Homeland Security Secretary David Pekoske released a memorandum declaring a 100-day deportation moratorium for most noncitizens in the United States.4
The moratorium was part of a broader Department of Homeland Security (DHS) review “of policies and practices concerning immigration enforcement,” as DHS’s three federal immigration agencies shifted focus after four years of extensive policy changes under the Trump administration. Now, with the turnover of administrations, the Department would carry out its purpose “based on sensible priorities and changing circumstances,” the memo read, particularly emphasizing “national security, border security, and public safety.”5
The 100-day pause on deportations was part of Biden’s larger plan to move toward a more orderly and humane immigration system. But even in that context, the moratorium was by no means categorical. Newcomers who had arrived in the U.S. after October 31, 2020, would not be protected from removal, an exception likely intended to discourage more migrants from showing up at the U.S.-Mexico border in response to the moratorium. The memo also proscribed carve-outs for people raising national security threats and those suspected of terrorism or espionage, as well as anyone whom U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) acting director determined should be removed. And, if an immigrant chose to waive their rights to stay in the U.S. while having meaningful access to counsel, they too could be deported.6
Likewise, the 100-day moratorium only represented a short-term hiatus on deportations, while the Biden administration worked to understand and address the shortcomings of the prior administration’s approach and DHS career staff got their bearings under new direction. Yet, the announcement set off a firestorm of criticism from Texas leaders, who quickly sued to prevent it from taking effect. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) argued that the moratorium would cause financial damage to his state, given the potential costs to provide health care and education for undocumented immigrants.
When the case landed in a federal court in South Texas, U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton — a Trump appointee — empathized with Texas’s officials, determining that the state’s concerns were not “purely speculative” when he quickly blocked the policy nationwide.7 Notably, the executive branch’s ability to exercise prosecutorial and enforcement discretion — including over when to pursue someone for an immigration violation or whether to execute a removal order — has been widely accepted for decades. Court decisions have regularly upheld broad discretion among executive agencies enforcing U.S. immigration laws, which officials have relied on to more effectively deploy limited resources. At the same time, unless someone is directly subject to policies involving this discretion (i.e. a noncitizen), it has historically been difficult for a potential plaintiff to establish standing and successfully pursue a lawsuit against the federal government’s use of discretion in the immigration context.8 For these reasons, Tipton’s temporary order blocking the deportation moratorium came as a surprise to legal experts, who criticized its perceived departure from precedent.9
Nevertheless, several weeks later, Tipton enjoined Biden’s deportation moratorium indefinitely.10 And, as the litigation continued, it ultimately became moot, as the first 100 days of the administration quickly passed. Hundreds of individuals were deported from the U.S. in the immediate aftermath of Tipton’s ruling — including some who may have had valid claims for protection or other relief — before the Biden administration could complete its review of the prior administration’s policies.
Having run out the clock on the moratorium, Texas and other GOP-led states saw a clear model for how to halt Biden administration immigration policies.11 Just as Democratic state officials were able to successfully delay or indefinitely pause various Trump policies through the courts, Republican state officials understood they could now do the same to Biden policies.12 Over the ensuing three-and-a-half years, Texas has been zealous in filing case after case challenging Biden’s immigration agenda, engaging in “an unrelenting, and mostly successful, legal war” to undermine the administration.13
Attempting to Retain Trump Border Policies
But Texas did not rely on the judiciary solely to block Biden initiatives. The state’s leadership also turned to the courts to retain various Trump-era policies at the U.S.-Mexico border, despite the new administration’s efforts to end them.
Announced in December 2018, the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as “Remain in Mexico,” was one of the Trump administration’s signature policies meant to control humanitarian migration at the U.S.’s southern border.14 Under MPP, migrants and asylum seekers were forced to wait in Mexico, often in dangerous northern border towns, before and between their U.S. immigration hearings — a departure from the norm, as asylum seekers usually await their court dates from within the U.S.
Because of the program, vulnerable individuals and families often spent months if not over a year trapped in Mexico, where under the Trump administration they were subject to more than 1,500 murders, kidnappings, and other violent attacks.15 MPP also made it more difficult for people to retain counsel, and without help from U.S.-based attorneys to navigate the country’s byzantine immigration system, grant rates for humanitarian relief were strikingly low, raising concerns that bona fide asylum seekers were being wrongfully returned to harm.16
On Biden’s first day in office, Pekoske — then the acting secretary of DHS — suspended new enrollments in MPP. The following month, border officials started processing people who had been previously enrolled in the program and stuck in Mexico indefinitely amid the Covid-19 pandemic so they could complete their pending immigration proceedings within the U.S. And, on June 1, 2021, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas directed his department to officially terminate MPP. 17
However, by then, Texas and Missouri had already sued the Biden administration to try to keep MPP in effect, calling the decision to sunset the program “arbitrary and capricious” and blaming increased migration at the U.S.-Mexico border on the policy change.18 The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. northern district of Texas’s Amarillo division, ended up before U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk — the sole presiding district judge in that division.19 Much like Tipton, Kacsmaryk had been appointed to the bench by Trump, and his courtroom had already become a frequent venue for conservative law firms, advocacy groups, and the state of Texas to file suit given his background in conservative legal advocacy.20
Subsequently, Kacsmaryk sided with Texas and Missouri, ordering the federal government “to enforce and implement MPP in good faith” until the border policy had been “lawfully rescinded” and the U.S. had the capacity to detain any noncitizens as required by law.21 In practice, this meant he mandated the Biden administration to undertake diplomatic talks with Mexico to reimplement the program — a move that legal analysts called “extraordinary and unprecedented” given its interference in international relations.22 In response, the administration complied with Kacsmaryk’s court order, engaging Mexico on a deal and eventually rolling out a new iteration of the program in December 2021 that implicated more nationalities, while allowing for greater access to humanitarian exemptions from enrollment.23 Yet, the administration also sought to further justify the termination of MPP as the litigation proceeded, with Mayorkas releasing a second termination memo on October 29, 2021.24
The Fifth Circuit affirmed Kacsmaryk’s decision in December 2021. But on June 30, 2022, the Supreme Court disagreed, ruling 5-4 that DHS’s termination of MPP had not violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).25 The Court found that MPP was not mandated by federal law and that court orders requiring it interfered with the executive branch’s authority to manage foreign relations.26
By August 8, 2022, the Northern District of Texas had lifted its order mandating that the Biden administration enforce MPP, and federal officials immediately stopped enrolling people in the program, while gradually disenrolling those already subjected.27 However, the Supreme Court returned the case to Kacsmaryk for further consideration, who suspended the Mayorkas termination memo, even as he refrained from ordering the U.S. to return migrants to Mexico.28 Litigation remains ongoing, but in February 2023, the Mexican government announced it would reject any effort to reimplement the program.29
In separate litigation, Texas also took part in challenging the Biden administration’s plans to end the Title 42 public health order, a pandemic-era policy inherited from Trump that allowed officials to quickly expel migrants without ever letting them access their statutory right to seek asylum. Texas filed its own lawsuit in April 2022 but later decided not to pursue that case and instead joined a coalition of states led by Arizona that was trying to keep the expulsions in place.30 The legal action was able to defer Title 42’s denouement, which ultimately took place on May 11, 2023 — nearly a year after the Biden administration had initially planned to wind it down, and following several delays caused by court intervention.31
Delaying Biden Administration Enforcement Priorities
On September 30, 2021, Mayorkas released a memo refining his department’s interim civil enforcement guidelines — again, focused on national security, border security, and public safety — that Pekoske had outlined back in January.32 Citing the extensive contributions undocumented people make to the country as frontline workers, faith leaders, farmhands, and other integral members of their communities, the memo noted that “the fact an individual is a removable noncitizen therefore should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them.”33
Instead, Mayorkas laid out three civil immigration enforcement priorities for DHS: people who posed a threat to national security based on terrorism, espionage, or related activities; people deemed a threat to public safety, “typically because of serious criminal conduct,” with aggravating and mitigating factors potentially swaying whether to move forward with enforcement; and people perceived as a threat to border security for recently trying to enter the U.S. unlawfully.34
Given limited resources and a U.S. undocumented population eclipsing 11 million people, the executive branch under both parties has historically set such immigration enforcement priorities to focus on national security threats, people with criminal records, noncitizens who had already been ordered removed, or individuals who had accessed immigration benefits by fraud.35 In fact, the true anomaly was that — under Trump — DHS issued policies that “prioritized” virtually all undocumented individuals, rather than placing a particular emphasis on specific demographics. This meant that most anyone who could legally be removed from the U.S. lived under the specter of potential repatriation for four years, but also that federal resources were often not focused on more serious cases. In context, the 2021 immigration enforcement priorities generally marked a return to the status quo, with modest updates to reflect myriad operational and humanitarian issues.
Nevertheless, Texas was joined by Louisiana in challenging the enforcement priorities, in a case again presided over by Tipton, who in June 2022 ruled that the priorities were inconsistent with federal law and declared Mayorkas’s memo unlawful.36 The decision drew criticism and accusations of judge shopping from legal experts, and while the Supreme Court refused to reinstate the Biden administration’s enforcement priorities, the justices did decide to circumvent the Fifth Circuit and take up the case directly.37
In June 2023, an 8-1 majority of the high court dismissed the lawsuit in an opinion penned by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, holding that Texas and Louisiana lacked standing to challenge Mayorkas’s guidelines.38 Although the suit was ultimately unsuccessful, the litigation allowed the states to block implementation of the Biden administration’s enforcement priorities and complicate federal officials’ use of prosecutorial discretion for a year, from June 2022 through June 2023.
Unsuccessfully Challenging Parole Programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans
On October 12, 2022, the Biden administration announced a new process to allow up to 24,000 Venezuelans with U.S.-based sponsors willing to financially support them to come stateside.39 Under the program, Venezuelans applied for advance travel authorizations and eventually parole, which allowed them to temporarily reside in the U.S. and quickly qualify for work authorization. The process was explicitly modeled after a similar private sponsorship initiative, Uniting for Ukraine (U4U), which had successfully helped Ukrainians escaping Russia’s invasion to find safety in the U.S.40
Soon, what started as a Venezuela-specific program evolved into a more hemispheric undertaking when, on January 5, 2023, the Biden administration debuted a new iteration of its private sponsorship framework that also included Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans.41 The choice of the four nationalities was no coincidence; they had been driving much of the heightened migration within the Americas amid issues at home with autocratic governments, economic dislocation after the Covid-19 pandemic, natural disasters, and — in the case of Haiti — fallout from the assassination of a sitting president.42
While limited in scope – the Biden administration capped the number of people from all four nationalities who could come to the U.S. via the private sponsorship processes to a total of 30,000 per month (360,000 per year) – the program represented a positive development and a lifeline for many. In addition to providing a needed humanitarian pathway (particularly important given the various limits on asylum implemented by the Biden administration), the parole programs sought to relieve pressure along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The underlying strategy behind these programs — an increase in legal pathways coupled with border expulsions, returns, or removals to Mexico of people from the four countries who tried to cross into the U.S. without authorization — has been touted as a success by the Biden administration. Last year, DHS publicly celebrated an 89% drop in the seven-day average number of migrant border encounters from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV) between mid-December 2022 and the end of June 2023, a statistical shift that suggests the creation of alternative legal pathways reduced irregular migration.43
Yet, despite the CHNV programs’ apparent contributions to a substantial decline in arrivals of those four nationalities at the U.S.’s southern border, 21 states led by Texas sued the Biden administration over the policy, while also criticizing the White House for not doing enough to manage the number of newcomers crossing irregularly into the U.S. The states asserted that the CHNV processes exceeded the executive branch’s parole authority and violated federal rulemaking requirements.44
Like the initial Venezuelan initiative, the CHNV processes are modeled after U4U, which has not faced legal challenges from Texas and the other state plaintiffs. All the CHNV parole-based programs allow people to pursue legal work quicker, while requiring them to be financially supported by a private sponsor, not governments or nonprofits. In these ways, the processes represent promising, self-sustaining solutions to the real challenges and opportunities posed by large-scale humanitarian migration at the border.
Nevertheless, Texas challenged the parole programs in federal court, bringing suit in the federal district division where it had a near certain chance of being assigned to Tipton, leading some critics to note at least the perception of another example of judge shopping.45 And, when the Biden administration sought to transfer the case elsewhere, Tipton denied the request.46
Yet, despite previous rulings against other Biden administration immigration policies, in March, Tipton dismissed the Texas-led lawsuit against CHNV. In siding with the federal government, Tipton found that the coalition of GOP-led states could not show they had been injured by the programs, which meant they had not established standing to bring the lawsuit.47 His opinion noted that as many as 44% fewer Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans had arrived in the U.S. in roughly the first five months since the new private sponsorship processes had been implemented, compared to the months directly before, even accounting for those arriving through the CHNV programs.48 Texas filed a motion asking for Tipton to reconsider his decision, which he has since denied, and the case will likely move onto the Fifth Circuit.49
At the same time, news broke in August 2024 that DHS had temporarily suspended processing for the CHNV programs while officials implement more security measures, after reports of potential fraud by some U.S.-based sponsors.50
Trying to End DACA, Again
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) debuted in 2012 under the Obama administration, to safeguard sympathetic young people brought to the U.S. as children without authorization and provide them with opportunities to study, legally work, and thrive without the fear of deportation. After successfully challenging a similar Obama-era program for undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, Texas’s legal actions to end the DACA program began in 2018, predating Biden’s presidency.51
However, soon after Biden took office, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen ruled that DACA was unlawful in July 2021. He allowed current recipients to maintain their protections for the time being, citing their reliance interests, but his ruling jeopardized the program’s future and halted the adjudication of all initial applications.
Hanen’s decision was based on both substantive and procedural considerations. In terms of procedure, Hanen faulted the Obama administration for establishing the program through a memorandum, rather than engaging in formal notice-and-comment rulemaking. In terms of substance, he found that DACA was inconsistent with federal law and rejected the argument that it was justified under DHS’s inherent prosecutorial discretion.
To address the procedural issue, the Biden administration used the formal rulemaking process to propose and eventually finalize a regulation intended to fortify DACA, maintaining in part that Dreamers “should not be a priority for removal.”52 But because the procedural concerns were only one of several issues raised by Hanen, and because the rule delineated a program that was substantively almost identical to the one that had existed before, it was unclear whether the rulemaking would fully satisfy the deficiencies identified by the court.53
Soon after the Biden administration’s DACA regulation was finalized, the Fifth Circuit remanded the states’ lawsuit to Hanen so he could decide whether the formal rulemaking changed his outlook on the program’s legality. While it did address many of his concerns about the creation of the original Obama-era guidance, it did not preempt the other issues he had raised. Consequently, on September 13, 2023, Hanen issued a new decision finding that DHS “made no effort… to cure any of the substantive problems noted by this Court” or on appeal.54 He then subjected the Biden administration’s DACA regulation to the same injunction as the larger program (while keeping the partial stay in place for current recipients), handing Texas’s leaders a win and teeing up a likely battle in the Supreme Court to ultimately decide DACA’s legality.
Hanging in the balance are the stability and futures of hundreds of thousands of current DACA recipients, as well as many more Dreamers who are otherwise eligible to apply but have been unable to access protection because of the ongoing litigation led by Texas.55
Conclusion
Through the federal judiciary, Texas has been able to meaningfully intervene in the Biden administration’s plans for immigration and border policy. Lawsuits — no matter whether they ultimately succeeded — have delayed the implementation of several key federal measures and created a specter of uncertainty over others, while prolonging the time that some of the world’s most vulnerable migrants and asylum seekers have been subject to protocols that leave them in danger.
The result has been instability and confusion, with policy dictated as much by court orders and injunctions as by the administration or its experts. This situation underscores the potential significance of a litigious leadership in Texas for immigration and other contentious yet critical topics.
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1 Tierney Sneed, “DOJ Ramps Up Its Allegations That Texas Is ‘Judge-Shopping’ in Cases Against Biden,”
CNN, March 7, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/03/politics/justice-department-texas-judgeshopping/index.html.
2 “The Current State of DACA: Challenges Await in Litigation and Rulemaking,” National Immigration
Forum, April 15, 2022, https://immigrationforum.org/article/the-current-state-of-daca-challenges-awaitin-litigation-and-rulemaking/.
3 Erik Ortiz, “State AGS Have Sued the Trump Admin. 138 Times – Nearly Double Those of Obama, Bush,”
NBCNews.com, November 16, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/state-attorneysgeneral-have-sued-trump-s-administration-138-times-n1247733.
4 David Pekoske, “Review of and Interim Revision to Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal
Policies and Priorities,” January 20, 2021,
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5 Pekoske, “Review of and Interim Revision,” 2.
6 Pekoske, “Review of and Interim Revision,” 3-4.
7 Julián Aguilar, “Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Biden’s 100-Day Deportation Moratorium After
Texas Sues Administration,” January 26, 2021, https://www.texastribune.org/2021/01/26/texas-joebiden-deportation-moratorium-ken-paxton/.
8 Kate M. Manuel and Todd Garvey, “Prosecutorial Discretion in Immigration Enforcement: Legal Issues,”
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https://thehill.com/homenews/news/457485-washington-state-ag-files-lawsuit-over-trump-publiccharge-rule/; Amy Goldstein, “Coalition of States Sues Trump Over National Emergency to Build Border Wall,” The Washington Post, February 18, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/healthscience/coalition-of-states-sues-trump-over-national-emergency-to-build-borderwall/2019/02/18/9da8019c-33a8-11e9-854a-7a14d7fec96a_story.html.
13 Tierney Sneed, “Why Texas Is a Legal Graveyard for Biden Policies,” CNN, March 3, 2022,
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18 Ken Paxton et al., “Complaint,” Texas Office of the Attorney General, April 13, 2021,
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22 American Immigration Council, “Migrant Protection Protocols.”
23 American Immigration Council, “Migrant Protection Protocols.”
24 Alejandro N. Mayorkas, “Termination of the Migrant Protection Protocols,” October 29, 2021,
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2022-01/21_1029_mpp-termination-memo.pdf.
25 Hillel R. Smith, “Supreme Court Rules That Migrant Protection Protocols Rescission Was Not
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28 Montoya-Galvez, “Judge Suspends Biden Administration’s.”
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30 Uriel J. García and Alexa Ura, “U.S. Supreme Court Rules to Keep Title 42, the Pandemic-Era Policy to
Quickly Turn Away Migrants, for Now,” The Texas Tribune, December 27, 2022,
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/12/27/title-42-us-mexico-border-supreme-court/.
31 Uriel J. García, “Judge Blocks Biden Administration from Lifting Public Health Order Used to Quickly
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33 Alejandro N. Mayorkas, “Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law,” September 30,
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34 Mayorkas, “Guidelines for the Enforcement,” 3-4.
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37 Amy Howe, “Divided Court Declines to Reinstate Biden’s Immigration Guidelines, Sets Case for
Argument This Fall,” SCOTUSblog, July 21, 2022, https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/07/divided-courtdeclines-to-reinstate-bidens-immigration-guidelines-sets-case-for-argument-this-fall/.
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39 Danilo Zak, “Explainer: Venezuela Parole Program and Title 42 Expansion,” National Immigration
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40 Department of Homeland Security, ”Implementation of a Parole Process for Venezuelans,“ October 19,
2022, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/10/19/2022-22739/implementation-of-aparole-process-for-venezuelans.
41 “The Biden Administration’s Humanitarian Parole Program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and
Venezuelans: An Overview,” American Immigration Council, October 31, 2023,
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42 Dánica Coto and Evens Sanon, “Haiti in Upheaval: President Moïse Assassinated at Home,” AP News,
July 7, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/haiti-president-jovenel-moise-killedb56a0f8fec0832028bdc51e8d59c6af2; Arturo Castellanos-Canales, “The Reasons Behind the Increased
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