Immigration, particularly that of illegal aliens at the U.S. southern border, is a controversial issue in 21st century America. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has expressed concern about the immigration situation. likely impact on the unemployment rate. Buyers and tenants are concerned about its impact on housing prices and rents. Law enforcement officials are wondering about its impact on crime rate. School districts are concerned about increasing immigrant student enrollment and academic progress. And Americans are generally concerned about immigration-related issues, such as citizenship rights and the assimilation of immigrants into the national culture.

Now comes a lawsuit claiming that President Biden’s immigration executive orders, signed on his first day in office in 2021, violated provisions of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). Yes, immigration authorized by Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appears to be harming the nation’s physical environment, with the primary environmental watchdog agency, the EPA, appearing indifferent to this environmental damage.

The Environmental Impact Agency (EPA), often criticized

President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) in 1970, creating the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Americans at the time were receptive to the idea of ​​a new independent executive agency, charged with protecting human health and the environment, influenced by Rachel Carsonthe best-selling book of Silent Springwhich gave birth to the modern environmental movement.

NEPA was designed to force all federal agencies to report on the environmental impacts of their proposed policies, by requiring a detailed environmental impact statement (EIS) of any proposed agency action. This EIS requirement has sometimes prompted Americans to accuse the EPA of needlessly interfering in the personal use of their private property, which can even go as far as regulatory revenue in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, charges that led to legal action against the EPA.

For example, two recent Supreme Court decisions are West Virginia v. EPA in 2022, which ruled that the EPA did not have the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide emissions linked to climate change, and Sackett v. EPA in 2023, which stripped wetlands of their federal protections under the Clean Water Act.

Most recently, 25 states sued the EPA to block emissions regulations intended to encourage manufacturing of electric vehiclesarguing that the EPA exceeded its legal authority. And now, a pro-environmental nonprofit group is taking on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for failing to produce an EIS analysis of immigration’s impact on the U.S. environment.

Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform (MCIR) v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS):

In September 2023, the Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform (MCIR), a pro-environment group, filed a lawsuit. trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, charging that mass immigration, including policies inducing population growth, has negatively impacted the environment since the Biden administration replaced the Trump administration in January 2021. This lawsuit alleged that many of the Biden administration’s actions on immigration… ending Trump’s construction of the border wall, ending Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, allowing Border Patrol agents to allow aliens to board buses to other states and preventing immigration agents from detaining and deporting aliens – should have been the subject of a state analysis. ‘EIS.

Note, however, that two other federal agencies, rather than the EPA, are defendants in this recent lawsuit. Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) are the culprits who implemented the immigration changes. USCIS is a component agency of DHS, as well as other components such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), US Secret Service, Guard U.S. Coastal and many other sub-departmental divisions. . DHS is a large, sprawling cabinet-level department into which many entities were moved after its creation in 2002.

At the time the complaint was filed, two other individual plaintiffs living near the southern border and four plaintiffs living in non-border states joined the suit. Plaintiffs from border states have alleged that the increase in illegal border crossings has damaged their local environment, with some illegal aliens even setting fires on their ranch lands. The other four plaintiffs in non-border states claimed that immigration-driven population growth had harmed the environment, with the mass resettlement of immigrants into their communities exacerbating homelessness and straining local public services and schools.

These plaintiffs all claimed that these results required a NEPA analysis that was never performed. While many Americans would argue that allowing millions of foreigners into the country is at first sight environmentally significant, neither the Department of Homeland Security nor the Department of State nor previous agencies such as the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) have ever complied with NEPA before acting to increase immigration.

Bench trial to determine plaintiff’s standing to sue

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, scheduled a bench test in July 2024 to determine whether the Biden administration’s actions caused the border crisis that harmed border plaintiffs. If they suffered such harm, the plaintiffs would have standing to pursue the merits of their case. The judge’s decisive statement concluded that “presidential administrations enjoy significant discretion in enforcing the nation’s immigration laws and protecting our borders.” But this latitude does not authorize the violation of other laws. »

Translation: Although Biden’s DHS and USCIS have some discretion in enforcing U.S. immigration laws, that discretion does not permit violation of NEPA’s investigative and report on the environmental damage resulting from these presidential immigration policies. The judge thus granted the plaintiffs standing to pursue their legal action against DHS and USCIS on the merits, scheduling a briefing from October 25 to December 20, 2024, in his court, on the appropriate remedies for DHS violations of NEPA.

THE Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which had filed an amicus brief to obtain plaintiff status, hopes that the plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of their case. CIS is a nonprofit think tank considered by the left-leaning Southern Poverty Center to be racist and anti-immigrationwhich suggests a likely controversy when this case returns to court.

Ruminations on this lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services

How can it be understood that two cabinet-level executive agencies – DHS and USCIS – authorize radically changed immigration policies at the southern border, but neglect or ignore the NEPA requirement that EPA investigate on the possible environmental damage caused by these immigration policies? And how would they make sense of a presidential administration that allows this outcome? And what do we think, furthermore, of a major department and one of its agencies failing in its legal responsibility to protect the presidential immigration policy environment, when these entities report directly to this same president ? What about a department that ultimately depends on a non-profit citizen group to go to court to seek redress for what it claims is the environmental damage caused by these immigration policies ?

Even though NEPA is only indirectly implicated as the culprit in this story, it nonetheless remains a law in effect since 1970 that has caused considerable grief to Americans over the years. Today, it is used to take some of the blame for presidential immigration policies that have damaged the environment that the EPA is charged with defending.

It might be a stretch to file a lawsuit against DHS and USCIS to bring charges against an elderly president near the end of his failed presidency and against two executive branch entities that report directly to him. The fact that the immigration situation has come to this outcome is also a testament to the terrible state of the Biden administration.

On a more cynical level, one can conclude that filing such a lawsuit for environmental damage when in fact the most serious violation is a major border disaster is a bit like accusing Al Capone of tax evasion when ‘In fact, his serious true crime was murder.

In recent years, self-identified alleged perpetrators and victims of some climate-related controversies have sought relief from the courts when, in fact, such relief would be more appropriate to leave to representative legislative bodies, because climate-related controversies climate continue to torment the political world today. sphere. There is little legal precedent for this type of court-adjudicated dispute resolution. How these controversies and lawsuits play out is unclear at this time.