Proponents of common sense immigration reform won a rare but crucial victory when a district court judge ruled a lawsuit from a Massachusetts group against three federal agencies can proceed.

At issue is the Biden administration’s abject failure to conduct an environmental analysis as required by the National Environmental Policy Act’s guidelines. Since 2021, Biden and Harris have opened the border, resulting in millions of foreign nationals entering the interior.

Simply defined, federal agencies are required to evaluate the environmental impacts of their major actions. Often referred to as the nation’s environmental Magna Carta, the guidelines are intended is to ensure federal decisions that affect the environment are made in good faith and in full view of the public. Which is why federal agencies are required to study the effect of open border immigration practices and to allow public comment before putting laws into effect that might dramatically increase population and are therefore injurious to the natural environment.

Several weeks ago, at a bench trial, Julie Axelrod, the Center for Immigration Studies’ director of litigation, successfully argued out of control immigration – and the significant population increases and environmental damage that accompany it – has a detrimental effect on Americans lives.

Two witnesses – former Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan and former Chief of the Border Patrol Rodney Scott – explained how the border wall and the “Remain in Mexico” policy were critical twin pillars in their border security strategy, and whose abrupt termination at the Biden administration’s onset precipitated the ongoing border crisis.

The multiple amnesties and border security laws have been, at best, loosely enforced or, at worst, criminally disregarded, have led to tens of millions of illegal aliens admitted in the six-plus decades since President Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act into law. The Department of Homeland Security has never conducted the statutorily mandated environmental impact study before implementing its immigration agenda.

Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, an experienced immigration lawyer, knows that his agency must comply with the guidelines, but like so many in the Biden administration, he has fearlessly disobeyed established laws.

Politically correct environmentalists who question whether open borders have detrimental effects on limited natural resources, should see the images of the more than 12,000 Haitians awaiting processing in a makeshift camp under Texas’ Del Rio Bridge. Similar scenes of huge gatherings of illegal aliens either heading for the border or debarking in major cities from busses have played out during Biden’s term.

In 2021, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality estimated each border crosser leaves approximately six to eight pounds of trash in the desert during his journey. Include other border states and add three years of greenlighting millions of illegal aliens, and the trash total would be “staggering,” according to the report’s co-author, Bruce Westerman.

Despite the tons of trash that illegal aliens strew across the Southwest, the Sierra Club and other prominent environmental groups have abandoned, as Axelrod noted, what should be their principal mission – protecting and conserving flora and fauna.

The legal victory is the first step in securing Americans’ right to have their surroundings protected from the reckless and illegal immigration agenda of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The case will now move forward to determine appropriate remedies, with briefings scheduled for later this year.

Axelrod urged future public engagement and hearings to assess how immigration affects local communities. Urban sprawl and the pressure put on public services like schools, hospitals and police departments are the most obvious and drain local budgets.

Overcoming years of criminal negligence that subverts sovereignty is an uphill climb, but the arduous journey has started.

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Copyright 2024 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].