The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
“Are federal law enforcement officers under the command and control of elected officials, or are they free to enforce the law as they choose, targeting the people they want to target, without guidance from an elected leader?
“That’s the fundamental question in United States v. Texas, a case that just arrived at the Supreme Court on its shadow docket.” It asks whether the Biden administration can instruct federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to follow certain enforcement priorities when deciding which undocumented immigrants to apprehend and remove from the country.
“Anyone with even a passing familiarity with federal immigration law will be baffled that this issue required litigation, much less that it needs to be resolved by the Supreme Court. Federal law provides that the secretary of Homeland Security “shall be responsible” for establishing national immigration enforcement and priorities.” Thus, immigration enforcement agencies such as ICE are under the control of a senior political official who is responsible to an elected president.
“Pursuant to this authority, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memo to ICE’s acting director last September, informing him that the agency should prioritize its enforcement efforts against undocumented or otherwise removable immigrants who “pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security and thus threaten America’s well-being.”
“Not long after Mayorkas issued this memo, however, the Republican attorneys general of Texas and Louisiana went to [Judge] Drew Tipton . . asking Tipton to declare Mayorkas’s memo unlawful. Tipton obliged, and his decision was embraced by an especially right-wing panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. . . .
“Now, the Biden administration is asking the Supreme Court to stay Tipton’s decision, temporarily restoring an elected administration’s control over federal law enforcement while this case proceeds. . . .
“One reason why Mayorkas must set these priorities is that Congress has not provided the Department of Homeland Security with enough resources to apprehend and deport every undocumented immigrant in the United States even if it wanted to. As the Justice Department noted in a 2014 memo, “there are approximately 11.3 million undocumented aliens in the country,” but Congress has only appropriated enough resources to “remove fewer than 400,000 such aliens each year.’” . . . – A Trump Judge Seized Control of ICE, Will the Supreme Court Stop Him, Ian Millhiser, Vox, 7/12/22 [Link]
Fact Check of Above Article: This writer claims that a court has no say-so over how ICE enforces the law. In terms of setting priorities for law enforcement that may be the case. But it is quite another matter when ICE, or any other agency, goes beyond prioritizing enforcement of laws to simply ignoring laws. The Obama and Biden Administrations claimed that ICE simply didn’t have the resources to pursue all of the illegal aliens in the U.S. Therefore, they had to focus enforcement on those criminal aliens who posed the greatest danger to our society. Such excuses are highly suspect. One reason is that neither administration ever significantly tried to increase funding and manpower for enforcement. Another reason is the Biden Administration’s drop-off of enforcement even against the dangerous aliens.
The inescapable conclusion is that Obama didn’t care about enforcement, and neither does Biden. Nevertheless, Obama and Biden (until recently) at least gave lip service to following the law, by holding out the possibility that all illegal aliens could be arrested, even if ICE primarily targeted a limited number of them. What changed with the Biden Administration? It was the following statement by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas: “The fact that an individual is a removable [alien] should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them.”
With that statement, Mayorkas declared that he will overrule the law passed by Congress which declares that all illegal aliens, alone on the basis of their illegal residence, are subject to enforcement. Under our constitutional system, our elected representatives make laws, not unelected bureaucrats like Mayorkas. It’s entirely appropriate for a court to remind him of his limits.
As a practical matter, it is bad policy to state openly that large numbers of illegal aliens are off limits to enforcement. This gives them comfort and security in our country, and encourages more people to come. Even limited enforcement offers some deterrence, while sending the message that we’re still a country ruled by laws. Sadly, it’s a message Mayorkas doesn’t care to send.