Supreme Court Declines To Restore Biden’s Curbs On ICE Arrests—For Now

Topline

The Supreme Court on Thursday chose not to remove a lower court block on a Biden Administration policy that narrowed down the types of people Immigration and Customs Enforcement can target for arrests, but the high court will hear the case later this year—marking the latest Biden immigration policy to get snagged in the court system.

Key Facts

The high court declined to halt a lower court ruling from last month suspending ICE’s 2021 enforcement guidelines, which told agents to prioritize arresting undocumented immigrants who threaten public safety or entered the U.S. after November 2020.

Four of the Supreme Court’s nine members dissented from Thursday’s decision, including the court’s three liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan—as well as conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

The court said it will hear arguments in the case—which originated as a lawsuit against the federal government from the states of Texas and Louisiana—in December.

Texas Judge Drew Tipton vacated ICE’s guidelines, arguing the executive branch didn’t have the authority to issue them, but the Biden Administration—which views the guidelines as a legal way of exercising its discretion—asked the Supreme Court to stay his decision while the case works its way through the federal appeals process.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the decision.

Key Background

ICE issued its guidelines in September, with Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas arguing federal agents shouldn’t use up limited resources arresting immigrants who contribute to their communities and pose no threat to the public. The policy was part of a range of actions by President Joe Biden to wind down some of the hardline immigration measures introduced during the Trump Administration, which viewed all undocumented immigrants as possible targets for deportation. In the Biden era, ICE has pledged to avoid raiding worksites and deporting victims of crime, and border agencies have also sought to wind down Trump-era policies. However, this gambit has faced legal challenges from Republican-led states. Tipton—a Trump appointee—blocked Biden from implementing a 100-day immigration moratorium last year after Texas sued the administration within days of Biden’s swearing-in, and Tipton also tried to block an interim version of ICE’s enforcement guidelines last August. In May, another Trump-appointed judge stopped Biden from phasing out Title 42, a pandemic-era policy under which hundreds of thousands of migrants were rapidly expelled back to Mexico.

Contra

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled in Biden’s favor on one immigration challenge: A lower court judge had ruled the administration can’t rescind a controversial Trump-era policy that required many asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico—often in makeshift tent cities—for their day in immigration court, but the high court said Biden has the authority to end this program.

Tangent

Biden’s push to change immigration policy comes amid a spike in arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border. Border Patrol agents apprehended a record-high 1.66 million people who attempted to cross the border in the fiscal year ending last September, and monthly arrests have remained high since then. Immigration officials say this increase is partly because the recidivism rate has grown as Title 42 caused more people to attempt multiple border crossings.