Joe Biden’s administration now has a free hand to implement its immigration policy.
A Supreme Court decision has validated the executive branch’s policy of prioritizing immigration enforcement by focusing on threats to public safety.
With a vote of 8 in favor and 1 against, the Court overturned a decision by a federal judge in Texas who had blocked this policy nationwide in June last year. The policy had been in force for less than a year.
The ruling, which was written by conservative Judge Brett Kavanaugh, said the plaintiffs had no right to sue against the plan. Kavanaugh wrote that the action brought by Texas and Louisiana was “extraordinarily unusual”, as it sought to “order the executive branch to change its policy of making more arrests”, according to NBCNEws. But federal courts don’t usually hear such cases, he added.
Announced in September 2021, President Joe Biden’s plan was a departure from Donald Trump’s hard-line approach to law enforcement as president.
The Biden administration had argued that, with around 11 million illegal immigrants in the US, the government needed to prioritize certain cases because it didn’t have the resources to detain and deport them all.
The states of Texas and Louisiana challenged this plan in court. They demanded that certain immigrants deemed dangerous – notably those convicted of serious crimes, human trafficking and certain gun crimes – be detained after being released by the migration authorities. A request rejected by Joe Biden’s administration, which requires an individual assessment to determine whether an immigrant poses a threat to public safety or national security before the government begins deportation proceedings.
Lawyers for the Biden administration argued that the president has broad discretion to set law enforcement priorities. In his ruling, Trump-appointed Judge Drew Tipton had said that Texas had standing, considering its ability to show that the immigrants who should have been detained were in Texas and, in some cases, had committed crimes.
Tipton found that the policy was illegal and that the government had not followed the correct procedure in implementing it.
This Supreme Court decision could be good news for applicants under the government’s humanitarian visa program initiated a few months ago. This new migration policy is the subject of a lawsuit brought by 20 Republican states. A preliminary hearing has been set for August, after being initially scheduled for June 12.