Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, who is leading an 18-state case agains the Biden administration's Circumvention of Lawful Pathways Rule, told Newsmax Sunday that the policy has the potential of sweeping "thousands and millions of asylum seekers into this country."
"[It's] simple and evil what the Biden administration is doing,' Rokita told Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "First of all, don't take the 'we need comprehensive immigration reform bait.' We may need some fixes, but we already have a very liberal immigration policy."
The pathways rule requires that immigrants who cross the border without authorization after traveling through another country must have either used an existing lawful process to enter the country, gone through a port of entry at a pre-scheduled time using the CBP One app, or have been denied asylum in another country through which they traveled, or they are deemed ineligible for asylum without meeting limited exceptions.
Rokita said the asylum policy that came before the current changes had a "rebuttable presumption that you shouldn't be here," and asylum seekers had to beyond that presumption to stay.
The new rule, though, "eviscerates that rebuttable presumption and just sweeps thousands and millions of asylum seekers into this country," he said.
Further, asylum used to be determined on a case-by-case basis, but the new rule says that people from certain countries are either given asylum, or if they use the app, are given a date to make their case, but that date could be up to a decade away, said Rokita.
"That's why 18 of us representing like-minded states who believe in our Constitution, who love this country are filing a lawsuit," said Rokita. "Even though Indiana is not Texas in terms of its location on the border, when you don't enforce the border, you don't have a sovereign nation. When you don't have a sovereign nation, every one of our states is a border state."
Rokita said he's visited the border three times as Indiana's attorney general, and his current lawsuit is the fourth one.
"This one is the linchpin," he said. "This rule change is so radical that from what we used to have…you don't have a country If you can't keep people out, and I'm not trying to be mean when I say that, but no country can take on every person who thinks they are disadvantaged."
Further, with court dates that come years in the future, the immigrants are applying for benefits, may not be paying taxes, and may or may not be working illegally.
"It's a destruction of our whole country," said Rokita.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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