Judge Mocks Biden Admin's 'Chicken Little' Arguments, Refuses to Revoke Restraining Order on Key Border Policy

Bob Hoge reporting for RedState 

As we reported, a federal judge in Florida on Thursday imposed a two-week temporary restraining order (TRO) on a Biden administration border policy just a few hours ahead of the expiration of public health measure Title 42. The outraged administration once again tried to undermine the nation’s judicial system, with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre calling the ruling “sabotage”:

“Let me just say on the ruling that you just laid out to me, um so look, the way we see that is sabotage,” she said.”It’s pure and simple, that’s how that reads to us.”

Biden and his cohorts like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have a history of casting doubts on the legitimacy of our courts, with the president saying in August 2022 that “We cannot allow an out-of-control Supreme Court…[to] push an extreme agenda that takes away freedoms and personal autonomy,” and Schumer threatening SCOTUS in 2020, warning, “you will pay a price” if you don’t rule the way we’d like.

Undermining one of the three branches of government—now that’s an actual threat to democracy.

Judge T. Kent Wetherell II, who issued the restraining order, was not amused at the White House’s antics, refusing Saturday to issue a stay of his ruling. He didn’t hold back in his critique of Biden’s inaction at the border, calling the request to remove the TRO “borderline frivolous.”

“DHS’s Chicken Little arguments about the impact of it not being able to (mis)use ‘parole’ under either policy as a processing tool for the surge of aliens arriving at the border are hard to square with the DHS Secretary’s recent comments that only ‘a fraction of the people that we encounter’ would be paroled into the country and that ‘the vast majority will be addressed in our border patrol facilities and our ICE detention facilities,’” he wrote.

“Chicken Little“, known in some cultures as “Henny Penny,” is a nod to the story about a young chicken who is convinced the sky is falling because a nut fell from a tree and hit her on the head. She runs around screaming “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!” convincing many of her animal friends of the coming armageddon before they belatedly realize everything’s fine.

The policy in question is known as “parole with conditions,” meaning the administration would basically be free to release illegals from custody without giving alien registration numbers or setting court dates—meaning there’s no way to track them.

The policy was outlined in a Border Patrol memo, which says that migrants can be allowed into the country on parole — a process typically reserved for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit” — if Customs and Border Protection (CBP) faces overcrowding. The memo calls the practice “parole with conditions” as migrants are required to make an appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or request a Notice to Appear by mail.

Under a parole release, migrants are rapidly released into the country, do not get an alien registration number and do not receive a court date.

The administration denies that they do mass releases of migrants who they’re unable to track. The obvious question then is: why are you fighting to keep this policy?

As RedState’s Mike Miller reported Thursday, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody had sued the Biden administration and requested the restraining order. Administration attorneys let the judge know Saturday that they planned to appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to have the TRO removed.

They better hope they get a judge who—unlike Wetherell—doesn’t call them out for their hypocrisy.