The ruling backs the Biden admin instructions to it’s immigration and customs official’s to concentrate on border deportations vs looking for people to deport that already are in the country like the old ‘raids’ enforcement policies….
Texas has increasing looked to run it’s own immigration policy….
Republicans have been using immigration as a political hammer against Democratic President’s Obama and Biden….
The Constitution expressly leaves immigration policy up to the President unless Congress passes a law on something….
And Congress has been unable to seriously produce agreeable immigration reform….
The policy was a departure from the Trump administration, which said anyone in the country illegally could be targeted for deportation.
The Biden administration’s guidelines were challenged by Texas, Louisiana and a number of other Republican-led states, and halted nationwide by a district judge in Texas, who said the guidelines violated federal law. The justices voted 5-4 last summer not to let the guidelines take effect while the Biden administration challenged the lower-court ruling.
In arguing the case, the Biden administration said the lower court ruling was untenable and at odds with past deference to how the executive branch carries out its duties under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
“Across 25 years and five presidential administrations, the agency has never implemented the INA in the manner that [the states] suggest,” Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar said during oral arguments. “Given congressional funding choices, it would be impossible for DHS to do so.”
The administration stressed the guidelines were just that, giving the nation’s 6,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents discretion to decide which unlawful immigrants posed the most pressing threats.
But Texas and other Republican-led states said the guidance violated specific commands from Congress….
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An estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants reside in the United States, and some have been here for decades. The Biden administration has urged Congress to pass a law that would one day let those individuals apply for U.S. citizenship. Republicans have opposed that idea, citing record numbers of illegal crossings on the southern border since Biden took office….