Supreme Court upholds Biden administration policy prioritizing deportations
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court handed President Joe Biden a win on immigration Friday while tossing a lawsuit from two Republican-led states that challenged the administration's policy.
After the Department of Homeland Security issued new guidelines to prioritize arresting and removing noncitizens who are suspected terrorists or dangerous criminals or who came into the country unlawfully recently, Texas and Louisiana filed a suit claiming that DHS wasn’t doing enough.
The states alleged that the priority policy violates a federal law requiring DHS to arrest and expel those in the U.S. illegally even if they pose little or no risk but the Supreme Court essentially stopped the suit by deciding that the states didn’t have the right to file suit in this case in the first place.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered the court’s 8-1 opinion, writing that "a citizen lacks standing to contest the policies of the prosecuting authority when he himself is neither prosecuted nor threatened with prosecution," citing the 1973 court ruling on Linda R.S. v. Richard D.
That opinion determined that in order to sue, a plaintiff needs to show that they have been injured and that a decision from the court would help alleviate that injury. In this case, the court says Texas and Louisiana are not the ones getting prosecuted or threatened with prosecution, so they do not have standing to sue.
Kavanaugh also noted in the opinion that the U.S. "invariably lacks the resources to arrest and prosecute" the estimated 11 million people believed to be in the country illegally.
He further backed the Biden administration policy saying that the "resource constraints necessitated prioritization in making immigration arrests."
This was one of two immigration-related rulings handed down by the High Court Friday.
The other case involved a section of a federal law that’s used to prosecute people who encourage illegal immigration. In that instance, the court voted 7-2 to uphold, rejecting the plaintiff’s argument that the law is too broad and violates the Constitution.
The case in front of the court involved Helaman Hansen, a California man who was convicted on encouragement and fraud charges under the law after he tricked hundreds of non-citizens between 2012 and 2016 by promising them a path to citizenship through adult adoption.
Hansen admitted that even though he knew the adult adoptions he was arranging would not lead to citizenship, he encouraged noncitizens to enter the U.S. illegally and collected more than $1.8 million from at least 471 people who paid him anywhere between $550 and $10,000 each.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority in the case, saying that "this is not the stuff of overbreadth" and the law remains valid.
The court now has 10 decisions remaining before they typically rise for summer recess at the end of June including the highly anticipated rulings on student loans and affirmative action.
Similar to the argument in the United States v. Texas, in the student loans case where six states are challenging the Department of Education's student debt relief plan, one of the questions is whether those states have the ability to bring the suit in the first place.
It’s a test of the Executive Branch’s power and could prove consequential in determining what constitutes presidential overreach.