During the Trump administration’s final weeks, the Department of Homeland Security quietly signed agreements with Arizona and at least three other states that threaten to temporarily derail President Biden’s efforts to undo his predecessor’s immigration policies.

The agreements say Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana and Texas are entitled to a 180-day consultation period before executive branch policy changes take effect. The Biden administration rejects that argument on grounds that immigration is solely the federal government’s responsibility under the Constitution.

The first legal test came in Texas, where the Republican governor and attorney general challenged the Democratic president’s 100-day moratorium on deportations, which took effect Friday. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton issued the temporary restraining order sought by Texas, barring the U.S. government from enforcing the pause on deportations.

President Donald Trump delivered his final farewell remarks as the nation's 45th president Wednesday morning from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland before he boarded Air Force One for a flight to his Florida home.

Former President Donald Trump relied heavily on executive powers for his immigration agenda because he was unable to build enough support for his policies in Congress. Now some of Trump’s supporters say Biden is going too far in doing the same to reverse them.

The Homeland Security Department declined to comment, citing the lawsuit. The Trump administration, usually eager to trumpet immigration enforcement, stayed publicly quiet on the agreements, which were first reported by BuzzFeed News.

The nine-page agreements known as Sanctuary for Americans First Enactment, or SAFE, are expansive. They require that state and local governments get 180 days’ notice of changes in the number of immigration agents, the number of people released from immigration custody, enforcement priorities, asylum criteria and who qualifies for legal status.

Without offering evidence, the agreements say looser enforcement can hurt education, health care, housing and jobs.

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, wrote Tuesday in a letter to the acting director of Homeland Security that he signed such an agreement on Jan. 8.

“As the Chief Law Enforcement Officer for the State of Arizona, one of my duties is to ensure the protection of our State’s residents,” Brnovich wrote.

The Biden administration’s attempt to pause deportations for 100 days “could lead to overcrowding at ICE facilities, forcing the release of dangerous offenders into our State,” Brnovich continued. “Additionally, it has come to our attention that people charged with or convicted of felonies have been released without coordination with the appropriate court or probation department.” He asked for data on releases from custody.

A spokeswoman for Brnovich, Katie Conner, said Arizona “has numerous cooperative agreements with federal, state and local enforcement agencies, including DHS.”

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, also Republican, signed an agreement on Dec. 15 to “stem the tide of illegal immigration,” spokesman Cory Dennis said.

In Indiana, former state Attorney General Curtis Hill, a Republican, signed the agreement on Dec. 22. It will remain in place after an initial review, an office spokeswoman said.

Hiroshi Motomura, a professor of immigration law and policy at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law, called the agreements “a very unusual, last-minute sort of thing” and said they raise questions about how an administration can tie the hands of its successor. He believes a deportation moratorium was within a president’s power.

Steve Legomsky, professor emeritus of the Washington University School of Law and former chief counsel for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the agreements are “a terrible idea” that could create “a race to the bottom,” with states opposing immigration competing against each other to drive immigrants elsewhere.

“For our entire history, immigration policy has been understood to be the exclusive responsibility of the federal government,” Legomsky said.

Keeping immigration enforcement with the federal government allows the nation to speak with a single voice as a matter of foreign policy and consistency across states, Legomsky said. We “can’t have 50 conflicting sets of immigration laws operating at the same time,” he said.

The Biden administration made similar arguments in a court filing Sunday after Texas asked the federal judge to block the deportation moratorium.

In addition to the deportation moratorium, the Biden administration suspended a policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court. Six of Biden’s 17 first-day executive orders dealt with immigration, such as halting work on a border wall with Mexico and lifting a travel ban on people from several predominantly Muslim countries.

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This article includes reporting by the Arizona Daily Star