In an 8-1 ruling on Friday, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a Biden Administration memorandum. The memo prioritizes immigration enforcement on illegals who pose a threat to national security, public safety or who recently crossed the border. However, it allows less pernicious criminals to remain.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court rules 8-1 that Texas and Louisiana lack standing to sue over the Biden administration’s immigration enforcement priorities. Justice Kavanaugh wrote Texas brought an “extraordinarily unusual lawsuit.” Here’s my story from November for background. pic.twitter.com/IrMll38Hlu
— Reena Jade Diamante (@reenajade) June 23, 2023
The states of Texas and Louisiana said that the memorandum gives Biden less discretion in enforcement.
SCOTUS said the states do not have standing. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion.
“The States essentially want the Federal Judiciary to order the Executive Branch to alter its arrest policy so as to make more arrests,” Kavanaugh wrote.
“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.’”
Texas’ and Louisiana’s lawsuit challenged the DHS’s immigration enforcement policies. The memorandum included guidelines for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to prioritize certain immigrants for detention and deportation. According to the policy, agents are urged to focus on the most serious and violent crimes.
The problem is they are releasing aliens into these states with criminal records. If states don’t have standing, and Congress won’t act, what next?
It would be nice if the states could send them all to D.C..
CNN reports:
“In Sum, the States have brought an extraordinarily unusual lawsuit,” Kavanaugh wrote, in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “They want a federal court to order the Executive Branch to alter its arrest policies so as to make more arrests. Federal courts have not traditionally entertained that kind of lawsuit; indeed, the States cite no precedent for a lawsuit like this.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett, wrote a concurring an opinion that concluded that the states also lacked reasoning, but for different reasons than the majority opinion. Justice Samuel Alito dissented.
Biden’s policy “inflicts substantial harm on the state and its residents by releasing illegal aliens with criminal convictions for serious crimes,” Justice Alito wrote.
