AUSTIN –Attorney General Paxton joined a multistate brief in the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to stop the Biden Administration’s efforts from creating more chaos at the southern border.

Title 42 is a Trump Administration-era body of laws that allows the rapid expulsion of aliens who pose a public health risk. President Biden has repeatedly attempted to repeal Title 42. A coalition of states, including Texas, sued to block Biden from doing so. In a win for border security, a federal judge in Louisiana agreed with the states and enjoined the Administration from scrapping the policies. The Biden Administration then appealed that ruling to the Fifth Circuit.

“Title 42 is one of the few remaining tools we have left to try and stop the flood of violent illegal aliens, human traffickers, deadly fentanyl, and other illicit drugs that are coming across the wide-open southern border that Joe Biden created,” said Attorney General Paxton. “Securing our border starts with enforcing the laws that are already on the books, and a vital piece of that is Title 42.”

The brief also highlights the hypocrisy of the Biden Administration’s attempts to use the pandemic as a justification for their left-wing priorities:

“[T]he Administration has not withdrawn any of its extensive vaccine mandates, mask mandates, and eviction moratoriums that have not been invalidated by the Supreme Court itself. . . . The contradictions and political calculations are manifest: the pandemic has supposedly abated the pandemic precisely enough for the Administration to terminate the pandemic-control measures it politically dislikes, but not enough such that the Administration cannot retain all of those pandemic-control measures that meet with its political favor and now even adopt sweeping new 12-digit expenses.”

In a separate action, Attorney General Paxton previously sued the Biden Administration when it attempted to end part of Title 42, and won.

To read the full answering brief, click here.