The Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear oral arguments over the Biden Administration’s immigration enforcement policies.
In the case of U.S. v Texas, the Justices will consider a memo that DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued in September 2021, instructing ICE agents to prioritize undocumented immigrants who “pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security and thus threaten America’s well-being” when making arrests or otherwise enforcing immigration law.
The litigation was brought to the Court by Texas and Louisiana to stop implementation of the memo. An eventual Supreme Court ruling on its legality could potentially limit the federal government’s ability to set enforcement priorities.
If the Court greenlights the states’ lawsuit against the Administration’s immigration enforcement priorities, “it means that the federal government is no longer getting the benefit of the doubt” in this context, Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law professor at Cornell Law School, told the Congressional newsletter Roll Call.
