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U.S. Supreme Court wrestles over Biden’s immigration enforcement policy
[This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/11/29/supreme-court-texas-biden-immigration-policy/.]
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on whether the Biden administration has the right to decide which undocumented immigrants federal agents should prioritize for deportation.
During the two hours of arguments, the court’s conservative justices sounded skeptical of the Biden administration’s efforts to prioritize undocumented immigrants convicted of felonies rather than ordering agents to deport all undocumented immigrants — which was the Trump administration’s policy.
The federal government has argued it doesn’t have the resources to deport the country’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants. Texas, which sued the Biden administration and has so far been successful in blocking its policy, argued that under federal immigration law, the government has the duty to deport every undocumented immigrant.
Chief Justice John Roberts said that if Congress has already approved a law that says the federal government shall deport any immigrant that has been convicted of a crime and is ordered deported, the court’s job is to affirm that interpretation.
“If Congress has passed a law that it is impossible for the executive to comply with, it’s our job to say what the law is, not whether or not it can be possibly implemented or whether there are difficulties there,” Roberts said. “I don’t think we should change that responsibility just because Congress and the executive can’t agree on something if it’s possible to address this problem. I don’t think we should let them off the hook.”
The case, Texas v. Biden, reached the Supreme Court after Texas and Louisiana sued the Biden administration in April 2021 for changing immigration enforcement priorities after Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, issued a memorandum instructing immigration agents to target undocumented immigrants who are convicted of felonies or pose a risk to public safety.
The states argued that Mayorkas’ memo was illegal, and U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, an appointee of former President Donald Trump based in Corpus Christi, ruled in the states’ favor last year.
During the Obama administration, which issued similar guidance to immigration agents, the priority guidelines were necessary because Congress allocated only enough money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport about 400,000 undocumented immigrants a year, according to a 2014 U.S. Department of Justice memo. Mayorkas’ memo said Congress still has not allocated enough money to target every undocumented immigrant in the country.
In Tuesday’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court, the states argued that the federal government is selectively enforcing immigration law and that because some undocumented immigrants are not being deported, the states are incurring costs for incarceration, education and health care.
Judd E. Stone II, solicitor general with the Texas attorney general’s office, told the justices that under U.S. immigration law, the federal government has to deport every undocumented immigrant who has been ordered deported, and it can’t…
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