Red state AG criticizes Biden administration's immigration policy: "Alice in Wonderland stuff"

A North Dakota federal judge halted the Biden administration's rule, which enabled DACA recipients to obtain ObamaCare coverage via the Affordable Care Act.

In an interview with Planet Chronicle Digital, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, who led the lawsuit against the Biden administration, stated that the judge's ruling on Monday was "not surprising."

"According to Kobach, before the election, it was argued that the judge would rule the way he did, and we got that impression at the hearing. Similarly, in other cases, Republican states have challenged Biden administration policies, and the administration has been changing the meaning of statutes by torturing the English language."

"Kobach stated that the Biden administration's attempt to define illegal aliens as lawfully present, despite their status, was similar to Alice in Wonderland."

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Dan Traynor, appointed by President Trump, issued a preliminary injunction in favor of 19 state attorneys general who sued against Biden's rule in August. The state attorneys general argued that the regulation violates a law prohibiting ObamaCare benefits to illegal immigrants. As a result, Biden's regulation will not be enforced in those states.

Traynor wrote that the Court concluded, through a common-sense inference, that the powerful incentive of health care would motivate aliens to remain in the Plaintiff States.

The Biden administration's executive action aimed to reclassify illegal aliens as legally present. The states that opposed the ruling were Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

If Biden's ruling had remained in effect, over 100,000 uninsured illegal immigrants would have obtained health insurance. The HHS rule would have enabled DACA recipients to apply for coverage through HealthCare.gov and state-based marketplaces. The rule would have achieved this by making technical changes to the definition of "lawfully present" used to determine eligibility.

On June 15, 2012, President Obama introduced the DACA program, an executive action aimed at resolving the issue of young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children. The program was not legislated but was implemented through a DHS memorandum.

In 2020, the Supreme Court prevented Trump's administration from ending DACA.

"The financial impact on federal taxpayers if the Biden regulation had been implemented would have been significant, as the ObamaCare subsidy could have been worth $4,000 or more per year for each of the hundreds of dreamers who would have received it. This would have included any illegal alien with work authorization, numbering in the thousands. The total financial impact on taxpayers would have been in the millions, possibly even hundreds of millions."

CMS is reviewing a lawsuit but remains silent on ongoing litigation.

Planet Chronicle Digital's Adam Shaw contributed to this report.