The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) is suing President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for withholding details about its policy to fly certain illegal aliens back to the United States after they were deported under prior administrations.
On Monday, executives with IRLI announced their lawsuit against DHS, accusing the agency of refusing to disclose details about its policy, announced in July 2021, to allow certain illegal aliens who served in the U.S. Armed Forces to return to the U.S. despite having been deported for committing crimes.
“This administration has made clear its desire to keep criminal aliens in the country, and now they are exploiting the American people’s support of military veterans to allow more potentially dangerous aliens to stay,” IRLI Executive Director Dale Wilcox said in a statement:
To make it worse, this White House is ignoring its legal obligation to respond to requests for information about this program. We will pursue this case so our citizens can know the truth about yet another Biden Administration effort that goes against their interests. [Emphasis added]
Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that IRLI sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to DHS officials in April of this year, requesting “all documentation and policies related to the DHS initiative … that identifies and returns previously deported non-citizen veterans” to the U.S.
Likewise, the FOIA request asked for all details related to any cases where illegal aliens had been returned to the U.S. under the policy.
According to the lawsuit, DHS officials wrote in April that they had received the FOIA request but no further determination was given to IRLI as to whether the request would be granted or not.
The lawsuit asks the federal court to rule that DHS must hand over all related documents and information pertaining to the policy.
“IRLI would love to know why DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services think it’s appropriate to launch a special amnesty, by executive fiat, that gives foreign criminals special treatment merely because they served briefly in our military services,” IRLI Director of Investigations Matt O’Brien said in a statement.
The lawsuit is Federation for American Immigration Reform v. DHS, No. 1:23-cv-03136 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
