Biden Administration Asks Supreme Court to Let It Keep Releasing Criminal Illegal Aliens

Zachary StieberJuly 8, 2022

President Joe Biden’s administration on July 8 asked the Supreme Court to stay a lower court order that is preventing it from implementing guidance that narrows which illegal immigrants can be arrested and deported.

The ruling by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals this week has forced the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “halt all implementation of the Guidance that had been charting the agency’s course for months” and thousands of DHS workers “have been told that they must disregard their training and stop considering the Secretary’s instructions,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, a Biden appointee, told the court in an application for a stay.

The appeals court on Wednesday upheld a district judge’s ruling that found the guidance in question, promulgated in 2021 by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, doesn’t adhere to federal law that instructs the U.S. government to arrest, detain, and remove illegal aliens convicted of certain crimes.

U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, a Trump appointee, ordered the government shortly after the guidance was issued not to implement it.

Mayorkas had told his agency not to take action against illegal immigrants solely due to a conviction, while also describing it as improper to move against an alien solely due to their being in the country illegally.

Mayorkas has claimed that the United States lacks the resources to take action against all illegal immigrants, which are estimated to number between 10.5 million and 22 million.

In a separate case concerning the same order, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year overturned a nationwide preliminary injunction against the order, Prelogar noted to the nation’s top court.

She said the Supreme Court should stay Tipton’s ruling in full, or at a minimum, in all states besides Texas and Louisiana, which brought the case that triggered the ruling.

“That judgment is