North Dakota back in federal court fighting Biden administration’s regulatory overreach
It’s another case study in why the North Dakota Legislature established a $15 million legal war chest to fight the Biden administration’s brazen regulatory overreach. This time North Dakota has joined forces with fourteen additional states to stop the feds from changing the status of 200,000 offspring of illegal immigrants from the Obama era so they can receive subsidized health care.
The case was filed in North Dakota U.S. District Court by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, according to Inforum.
The administrative procedure lawsuit seeks to reverse a Biden administration rule that would expand access to health care to recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA. In 2012, then-President Barack Obama signed an executive order that protected children brought to the U.S. illegally from deportation.
President Joe Biden announced in May that his administration would expand health care to DACA beneficiaries, also called “Dreamers.” It classifies those who are “lawfully present” in the U.S. as eligible for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
Yet the states’ lawsuit makes the case that the administration’s attempt to get around current restrictions violates a long-standing agreement on the legal status of of hundreds of thousands of individuals in the U.S. illegally.
The lawsuit claims those protected by DACA do not qualify for taxpayer-funded health care because, “by definition,” they are unlawfully present in the U.S. There are 530,110 such immigrants in the U.S., and the final rule would allow up to 200,000 to be eligible for “a subsidized health plan,” the lawsuit said.
“For over a decade, Obama’s DACA executive order has been defended in court on the basis that is was not changing anyone’s legal status, it was merely exercising prosecutorial discretion not to deport certain aliens,” Wrigley said. “Now, the federal government turns around and says DACA does change aliens’ legal status by making them ‘lawfully present’ for government subsidized healthcare. The lawlessness and hypocrisy of that move is breathtaking.”
Court documents indicate some 160 DACA individuals reside in North Dakota. Additionally, the lawsuit estimates up to 9,000 illegal immigrants live in the state. The filing argues the Biden administration regulation would significantly increase the current $27 million to $36 million cost already borne by North Dakota taxpayers for illegal aliens.
“Illegal aliens shouldn’t get a free pass into our country,” Kobach said in a statement. “They shouldn’t receive taxpayer benefits when they arrive, and the Biden-Harris administration shouldn’t get a free pass to violate federal law.”
All of North Dakota’s neighboring states participated in the federal lawsuit, except for Minnesota.