President Joe Biden's immigration policies are facing lawsuits from both sides of the issue, with both the Trump-aligned America First Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union vowing to take action against different parts of his recently announced changes.
After Biden announced his program Tuesday that will potentially allow more than a half-million immigrants who are married to or are the children of U.S. citizens to apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship, America First Legal vowed legal action, reports Axios.
Stephen Miller, the president of America First Legal and a long-time adviser to former President Donald Trump, slammed Biden's move as "one of the largest executive amnesties in American history."
"Congress has, for decades, refused to grant citizenship to illegal aliens," Miller said in a statement. "Now, acting as a tyrant king, Biden is circumventing Congress and incinerating the Constitution to unilaterally grant a pathway to citizenship to what will amount to potentially millions of illegals."
He further pointed out that once the immigrants are granted citizenship, they would have "full access to welfare, entitlements, the voting booth, and chain migration, meaning entire illegal alien extended family networks and be made into full voting citizens."
Miller, in addition, called Biden's move a "thunderous attack on American democracy in the form of an imperial edict."
Immigration advocates and top Democrats cheered Biden's latest move, coming on the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, commonly referred to as "Dreamer" legislation.
However, just two weeks ago, they were booing him for his executive order on asylum restrictions at the border.
The ACLU has filed legal action to stop the order, which suspends granting asylum to immigrants crossing between the nation's ports of entry if encounters reach a threshold of 2,500 or more entering daily for seven consecutive days.
Republicans also opposed Biden's asylum order, calling the measure "too little, too late" and accusing him of making the move because of the presidential election.
"He tried to convince us all for all this time that there was no way he could possibly fix the mess," House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., commented. "Now he wants to issue some weak executive order to try to address the issue. It's window dressing. Everybody knows it."