A Texas rancher and a local sheriff are both suing the Biden administration for failing to stop the record-breaking number of illegal immigrants from crossing the border, many of whom are passing through the rancher’s land.
Michael Vickers is a rancher with 1,000 acres in Brooks County who also works as a veterinarian and Brad Coe is the sheriff of Kinney County. On behalf of Vickers, Coe, as well as Kinney County and Atascosa County, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for failing to stop the massive influx of illegal immigrants, many of whom have been passing through Vickers’ land.
Dale Wilcox, the executive director of IRLI, said in a statement that it is “glaringly obvious” by now that the current administration “deliberately crashed border security” to “flood” the US with as many illegal immigrants as possible. Wilcox said that the record number of encounters at the US-Mexico border is not merely a matter of “policy failure” or violating existing statutes but amounts to a “flagrant disobedience” of the Constitution.
According to the lawsuit (Vickers vs. Biden), the plaintiffs accuse President Joe Biden and his administration of “knowingly adopted” policies that worked “in concert” to “encourage and facilitate” more illegal aliens to enter and then be released into the country while also stopping the “vast majority” of them from being removed while present “unlawfully.” The lawsuit describes what can only be described as a parole pipeline for illegal immigrants, and almost 1.2 million have entered the country since the beginning of 2023.
The lawsuit argues that the lack of enforcement of parole policies on the books has harmed the plaintiff’s ranch, pointing out that “tens of thousands” of immigrants have crossed the border illegally only to be “released into the interior” of the US after being detained, rather than deported, and end up passing across Vickers’ grasslands.
The suit claims Vickers suffered “thousands of dollars in damage” to his fences and gates from the illegal aliens, amounting to over $50,000 since 2021, as well as several thousand more to “mitigate environmental damage” from trash and litter, compromising water and food sources for Vickers’ livestock.
The case pleads with the court to recognize Biden’s mistakes and to end the ongoing policies causing the influx.
