DHS estimates about 11 million people are living in the country without permanent legal status.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement never had bed space for more than about 50,000 immigrants, down to about 34,000 now. The Biden administration has argued that Congress has never authorized enough funding to detain every immigrant in the country illegally, meaning Congress intends the government to use discretion in who it pursues.Įven under the Trump administration, U.S. Īlong with many Republicans, the states that filed the suit say the administration’s enforcement guidelines are too lax because immigration law requires immigrants in the country illegally to be detained. Under the Biden administration’s approach, which is similar to a 2014 policy under former PresidentĪrrests and deportations of immigrants living in the country-not counting those newly arrived at the border- have plunged. The Biden administration has taken a different approach to immigration challenges than the Trump administration, whose guidelines said any immigrant in the country illegally should be a target for arrest. Now, it said, “suits like this have recently become routine,” giving examples showing that just as Democratic-led states had used litigation to frustrate the Trump administration, Republican-held states repeatedly are suing the Biden White House.Ĭalifornia filed 122 lawsuits against the Trump administration, the brief said to date, Texas has sued the Biden administration 27 times. “Courts did not allow States to sue the federal government based on the indirect, downstream effects of federal policies.” “For most of our Nation’s history, a suit like this would have been unheard of,” the Justice Department said. The Justice Department also cited the case in calling on the court to stanch “a troubling trend” of states suing Washington on the claim that federal policies were imposing costs on state taxpayers. The Supreme Court has no deadline to act but typically moves quickly on emergency applications from the federal government. Texas and Louisiana are expected to file a response to Washington’s appeal. The administration asks the court to reinstate the guidelines while litigation continues in the lower courts. In papers submitted to the Supreme Court, the administration said the “judgment is thwarting the Secretary’s direction of the Department he leads and disrupting DHS’s efforts to focus its limited resources on the noncitizens who pose the gravest threat to national security, public safety, and the integrity of our Nation’s borders.”

The Fifth Circuit’s decision, which cited procedural reasons distinguishing it from the Sixth Circuit’s, blocked implementation of the DHS guidelines nationwide. Even so, “nothing in the Guidance, to repeat, prohibits a single agent from detaining or removing a single person or for that matter any category of noncitizens,” he wrote. “Federal law gives the National Government considerable authority over immigration policy,” Chief Judge Sutton wrote.

Sixth Circuit Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote that the Biden policy was similar to that of previous administrations, which also faced the reality that the government lacks the prison space to detain millions of noncitizens eligible for deportation. Texas and Louisiana, both with Republican attorneys general, argue the DHS guidelines impose costs on state taxpayers by increasing law-enforcement needs or requiring that public services be provided to noncitizens.Ī day earlier, the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati reached the opposite conclusion in a similar suit filed by another group of Republican-led states, Arizona, Montana and Ohio. “Such policy concerns are plainly outside the bounds.” Commitment to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality,’ ” the unsigned opinion said.

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