June 23, (THEWILL) – The US Supreme Court, on Friday, declared that Texas and Louisiana do not have the authority to challenge President Joe Biden’s administration’s guidelines on when to deport migrants from the country.
The judgement followed a suit by Texas and Louisiana, filed to challenge the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) immigration enforcement policies, which include guidelines for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to prioritise certain immigrants for detention and deportation. The policy urges agents to focus on the most serious and violent crimes.
“We will focus our efforts on the greatest threats while also recognising that the majority of undocumented noncitizens, who have been here for many years and who have contributed positively to our country’s well-being, are not priorities for removal,” Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, wrote in a release announcing the 2021 policy.
In their lawsuit, Texas and Louisiana claimed the Biden administration policy caused direct harm because of increased costs for social services, including health care and education.
The states also accused the administration of failing to enforce immigration laws Congress had enacted designed to “deal with increasing rates of criminal activity” by immigrants.
However, an eight-member panel of Justices in an 8-1 decision on Friday, held that the two states lacked the authority to sue over DHS’s earliest directives.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices, wrote that granting the states’ demands would have far-reaching consequences beyond immigration law.
Kavanaugh wrote: “The States essentially want the Federal Judiciary to order the Executive Branch to alter its arrest policy so as to make more arrests.
“But this Court has long held ‘that a citizen lacks standing to contest the policies of the prosecuting authority when he himself is neither prosecuted nor threatened with prosecution,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority.
“If the Court green-lighted this suit, we could anticipate complaints in future years about alleged Executive Branch under-enforcement of any similarly worded laws—whether they be drug laws, gun laws, obstruction of justice laws, or the like.
“We decline to start the Federal Judiciary down that uncharted path.”
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