The Left is used to the courts pushing their narrative. But sometimes the script is flipped.
And this federal judge lashed out at Biden with a devastating ruling.
A federal appeals court judge chastised the Biden administration on Wednesday for allegedly using underhanded legal tactics in a key immigration case, implying that the Justice Department was guilty of “colluding” with the ACLU and other immigrant rights groups to abandon a significant new hardline policy.
Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke said the Biden team appeared to be attempting to derail the case so that it would not reach the Supreme Court and undo years of migrant-friendly rulings from the historically liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The court stated that the administration may be attempting to avoid a politically embarrassing loss, or it may be engaging in a ruse in which it is working with activists to get an outcome that will tie the hands of a future president who is more interested in strict enforcement.
Whatever the reason, he claimed, the government is engaging in political machinations.
“At the very least it looks like the administration and its frenemies on the other side of this case are colluding to avoid playing their politically fraught game during an election year,” wrote Judge VanDyke, a Trump appointee.
The issue is the government’s asylum policy, which was announced last year. It tightens the restrictions on who can claim protection depending on whether asylum seekers had the opportunity to file a claim in another nation before traveling to the United States.
The idea is that a genuine refugee fleeing government persecution could seek asylum in the first country it reaches. That shows that those who go through many Central American countries and Mexico on their way to the United States are more like conventional migrants than asylum applicants.
Immigrant rights organizations objected to the ruling and filed a lawsuit to overturn it.
For months, the Biden administration was staunchly opposed to immigration activists. Government attorneys warned the court that if the asylum provision was repealed, the border could collapse completely.
Nonetheless, the government has joined forces with its opponents, including the ACLU, and urged the courts to put the case on hold while it negotiates a resolution.
The court concurred with a 2-1 decision.
Judge VanDyke dissented, claiming that they were enabling the government to cheat the system.
“Either it previously lied to this court by exaggerating the threat posed by vacating the rule, or it is now hiding the real reason it wants to hold this case in abeyance,” he wrote.
Immigration and environmental policy are two major areas where “sue-and-settle” is used.
Judge VanDyke speculated that the Biden administration may be attempting a two-fer in this case, collaborating with immigration activists on “policy that resonates with its base” while blaming the courts for any difficulties that arise as a result of the policy.
“It could take credit for creating an important rule and defending it with one hand, and then, by colluding with the plaintiffs, it can set the policy it actually wants with the other, all while publicly blaming the result — cloaked as it is in the language of a judicial ‘settlement’ — on the courts,” he wrote.
He said the administration appeared to have a strong position on its side of the issue, so the move to seek settlement was unusual, especially when “it is clear enough that the government is destined to prevail before the Supreme Court.”
“Given all of this, it’s hard to avoid any impression other than that the administration is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory — purposely avoiding an ultimate win that would eventually come later this year, whether from this court or from the Supreme Court,” the attorney general said.
Stay tuned to the Conservative Column.
