Thread by @America1stLegal

🚨MAJOR VICTORY🚨

AFL and @KenPaxtonTX just secured a federal court order PERMANENTLY ENDING an illegal Biden-era backdoor amnesty program that allowed immigration judges to indefinitely freeze removal proceedings against illegal aliens.

Today, AFL and @TXAG filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas challenging the Biden Department of Justice’s “Administrative Closure Rule,” which allowed immigration judges to indefinitely pause immigration court cases against illegal aliens.

@TXAG The same day the lawsuit was filed, the parties reached a settlement, and the court entered a final consent judgment vacating the rule and permanently enjoining its enforcement.

An illegal rule that allowed illegal aliens to remain in the United States indefinitely is now dead.

@TXAG Biden’s DOJ enacted the Administrative Closure Rule in 2024. 

The rule expanded the use of so-called “administrative closure,” a procedural device that removes a pending immigration case from an immigration judge’s docket.

@TXAG Under this rule, immigration judges were authorized to grant administrative closure for any reason — or no reason at all — upon request by even a single party.

They were required to grant it whenever both parties agreed, or one party requested it, and the other did not oppose.

@TXAG Once closed, removal cases were rarely reopened.

Historically, data showed that the average administratively closed case had been inactive for approximately:

➡️ 16 years at the immigration court level

➡️ 29 years at the Board of Immigration Appeals

@TXAG AFL’s complaint alleged that the Administrative Closure Rule exceeded DOJ’s statutory authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which directs immigration judges to “decide whether an alien is removable from the United States” at “the conclusion of the proceeding.”

The complaint further alleged that the rule was arbitrary and capricious and violated the Administrative Procedure Act, including because DOJ failed to consider the compounding effect of the rule alongside other Biden-era policies that directed enforcement officers to seek administrative closure of non-priority cases rather than pursue removal.

@TXAG The practical effect of the Administrative Closure Rule was to create an unauthorized, backdoor amnesty program for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens already subject to removal proceedings.

How?

Cases removed from active dockets are invisible to the system.

@TXAG That meant that aliens whose cases were administratively closed could remain in the United States indefinitely, and in most instances, were eligible to obtain employment authorization in the interim.

@TXAG Between January 2021 and January 2025, the number of administratively closed cases grew from approximately 278,000 to nearly 392,000.

By law, all of these individuals should have had their cases adjudicated and, where warranted, been deported.

@TXAG In the consent judgment entered today, the court declared the Administrative Closure Rule “in excess of statutory authority and contrary to law.”

@TXAG The court further declared that “no statute authorizes immigration judges to indefinitely administratively close or suspend adjudication of a case before them.”

@TXAG The court vacated the rule in its entirety.

It also permanently enjoined DOJ, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, and all their successors and employees from enforcing the rule or promulgating any substantially similar regulation.