The Biden administration’s restrictions on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which severely limit which illegal immigrants the agency can arrest and deport, were struck down by a federal judge on Friday, marking the administration’s second judicial setback on immigration policy, Fox News informed.
In response to a lawsuit brought by Texas and Louisiana alleging that the restrictions were unconstitutional, Texas Judge Drew Tipton halted the policy’s enforcement for seven days, giving time to the Biden administration to appeal.
In September, the administration issued a memorandum that made past instructions official, limiting ICE agents to target on three types of illegal migrants: recent border crossers, national security risks, and public safety concerns.
Agents have also been instructed to take into account considerations such as military service.
In his memo, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated that simply being in the country unlawfully was not enough to get detained or deported by ICE, as part of the Biden administration’s major revamping of immigration policy.
In a January interview with CBS News, Mayorkas stated, they have profoundly transformed the immigration enforcement from the inside, adding that for the first time ever, the policies expressly specify that a non-unauthorized citizen’s presence in the US will not be sufficient to initiate enforcement action.”
According to Tipton’s opinion, the government failed to reconcile the instruction with federal law, which requires detention in some circumstances. He claimed that the administration “offers an untenable reading of federal law that runs in the face of congressional constraints.”
Arrests and deportations have decreased as a result of this approach. ICE arrested 74,082 noncitizens and deported 59,011 noncitizens in FY 2021, which covered the final months of the Trump administration. Only 47,755 arrests took taken after Feb. 18 when the revised priorities were enacted, out of 74,082 made between October 2020 and October 2021. Only 28,677 deportations out of 59,011 took happened after February 18.
Be the first to comment