BISMARCK N.D. – Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach today led attorneys general from North and South Dakotas in a U.S. District Court motion to stop the Biden-Harris administration from implementing a regulation to give Obamacare to illegal aliens.
The regulation, set to take effect on Nov. 1, would make more than 200,000 deferred action for childhood arrival (DACA) recipients eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health plans, including 4,350 DACA recipients in Kansas. DACA protectees do not have legal documentation as citizens, but are shield against deportation and can work in the U.S. but lack legal residency status or a pathway to citizenship. Kobach filed the federal lawsuit in August.
As a result, they have been ineligible for publicly funded health insurance coverage. Of the 580,000 active DACA recipients, about 75 percent receive health insurance coverage through their employers. Kobach said the law was already clear on government benefits for illegals.
“Congress made it clear on two separate occasions that illegal aliens cannot receive Obamacare,” Kobach said. “First, a 1996 law makes clear that illegal aliens are generally prohibited from receiving federal benefits. Second, in the affordable care act itself, an alien has to be lawfully present in the United States to receive the subsidized health insurance,” he said.
“The Biden administration does not have a good response,” Kobach said. “I have argued immigration issues in many different cases, and I feel particularly good about the states’ chances in this one.”
North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley and South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley also appeared in court. Kobach served as lead counsel.
“Washington has failed to secure our southern border, and the cost of DACA is not the right solution for the states,” Jackley said. “DACA’s subsidized health insurance for illegal immigrants would be at the cost of struggling working citizens.”
Attorneys general from 15 states joined the lawsuit. In addition to Kobach, Wrigley and Jackley, attorneys general from Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia joined the lawsuit.
Research by The Heritage Foundation shows the costs of individual health insurance as doubled since Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) was instituted in 2014. Starting in 2014, the ACA imposed a number of costly new mandates and regulations on individual-market health insurance coverage and displaced private markets by creating new government-run health insurance “exchanges” to sell insurance. Partly to offset the increased costs of its mandates, the ACA also provided income-related subsidies for plans purchased through those exchanges.
Read latest filings in the case here.
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
