Lawsuit Using Environmental Law Against Biden Immigration Policies Can Proceed: Judge

A federal judge in Washington says a lawsuit that relies on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to challenge Biden administration actions on immigration can proceed, marking an unmatched, if still early, success for the use of environmental law against illegal immigration.

The lawsuit pits immigration reformers, environmentalists, and ranchers against the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of State.

“I think people would support the efforts to stop ignoring the massive environmental consequences of immigration,” Julie Axelrod, director of litigation for the Center for Immigration Studies, said in an Aug. 30 interview with The Epoch Times.

One plaintiff in the D.C. lawsuit, cattle rancher Chance Smith, lives near Douglas, Arizona, in an area that his family has called home since the 19th century.

The shift to Biden from Trump “caused the number of crossers he personally sees crossing the ranch to increase to eight or nine times [what] it was before,” according to the complaint.

Smith said those border jumpers degrade the land, leaving behind trash or even buried drugs and guns.

“If NEPA should apply to any government policy, it should be to federal policies that induce population growth,” the complaint reads.

The suit cites the direct effects of unchecked illegal immigration on the border, as experienced by Smith and others. It also refers to the broader negative effects of immigration-driven population growth, including urban sprawl, farmland loss, reduced biodiversity, and strain on water resources.

It also argues that many of the actions that the lawsuit challenges fall under agency discretion.

McFadden ruled that Smith, one of the plaintiffs, has standing, stating that the injuries he claims aren’t excessively speculative “if they can be proven true or false later in the litigation.”

He dismissed just two of the plaintiffs’ nine claims.

The surviving claims include challenges to State Department actions on refugee resettlement, as well as other policy changes to refugee detention, fines, and related actions.

“It’s not necessarily a bad thing that all judges don’t see things the same way,” Axelrod said.

She thinks the plaintiffs and defendants will likely both file motions for summary judgment.

NEPA itself dates back to 1970, a period when overpopulation topped the list of worries for many environmentalists.

That declaration also states that the federal government bears responsibility for “[achieving] a balance between population and resource use which will permit high standards of living and a wide sharing of life’s amenities.”

NEPA was passed just half a decade after an even more transformative law: the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

“The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs,” former Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), a major supporter of the legislation, testified before an immigration subcommittee.

Yet, in the following decades, mass immigration, both legal and illegal, has driven the majority of population growth in the United States.

In recent decades, however, immigration has become a third rail for environmentalists.

As recently as 1989, the Sierra Club maintained that “immigration to the U.S. should be no greater than that which will permit achievement of population stabilization in the U.S.”

Mega-donor David Gelbaum may have led the Sierra Club to change its tune. During the mid-1990s, the businessman told the group’s director that “if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from [him].”

He later donated more than $100 million to the organization.

A SUSPS insider told The Epoch Times that multiple founding members were unaware of any efforts by the Sierra Club to use NEPA or other environmental laws against illegal immigration in earlier decades.

The Sierra Club and Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time. The departments of Justice and State declined to comment on the lawsuit.