Supreme Court Rejects Texas Effort to Force Biden Administration to Change Deportation Policy
Elizabeth B. Prelogar, solicitor general with the Department of Justice, argued in November that the federal government didn’t stop enforcing immigration law but instead is using its resources efficiently.
“This is not about reducing enforcement of immigration laws. It’s about prioritizing limited resources to, say, go after Person A instead of Person B, and there’s no reason to conclude that that’s actually going to lead to less enforcement against individuals overall,” she said.
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an immigration attorney and law professor at Ohio State University, said the court’s ruling reaffirms that the president “gets to decide how the the federal government enforces immigration law — not the courts, governors or state attorneys general.”
“The Court didn’t weigh in on Texas’ own border-policing policies, but today’s decision puts the legal wind at the Biden administration’s back by repeating what it has said in the past: The president has immense discretion to adjust immigration law enforcement priorities, and if others don’t like it, they can complain to Congress or take it out against the president at the ballot box,” he added.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who has criticized the Biden administration for its immigration policies and has sent the National Guard to the border to apprehend people crossing the Rio Grande, called the court’s ruling “outrageous” in a tweet.
“SCOTUS gives the Biden Admin. carte blanche to avoid accountability for abandoning enforcement of immigration laws,” Abbott wrote. “Texas will continue to deploy the National Guard to repel & turn back illegal immigrants trying to enter Texas illegally.”
The Texas attorney general’s office didn’t respond to an email from the The Texas Tribune seeking comment. The lawsuit was filed by the office of suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is facing an impeachment trial in the Texas Senate.
Some immigrant rights advocates welcomed the Supreme Court ruling.
“This decision soundly rejects the misguided attempt by Texas and Louisiana to force the government to implement the most draconian immigration enforcement policy,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project.
This is the second time the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the Biden administration in a Texas-led immigration lawsuit.
In June 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration had the right to end a Trump-era immigration policy known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, which forces asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico as their cases make their way through U.S. immigration courts. That ruling also stemmed from a Texas lawsuit.
In the lower courts, Texas — which has sued the Biden administration about two dozen times — has had success at stopping some of the Biden administration’s immigration policies. Most of these lawsuits have been filed in courtrooms with judges appointed under the Trump administration.
Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas at Austin law professor, filed an amicus brief in the case the Supreme Court heard in November, saying Texas has been strategically filing lawsuits in federal courts with judges the state believes will rule in its favor.
“This is more than forum shopping, it is thinly veiled judge shopping,” Vladeck wrote. “Each of the 20 cases was filed in a division that assigns all or virtually all cases to judges appointed during Republican presidencies.”
In March 2022, Paxton’s office denied it was judge shopping.
“The [attorney general’s] office has an extraordinarily high win rate,” a spokesperson said at the time. “That’s a testament not only to the quality of [Attorney] General Paxton’s legal team and lawsuits, but also the flagrant illegality of this administration; when they’re pressed in court, they lose.”
Uriel J. García is an immigration reporter based in El Paso.This storyis published courtesy of the Texas Tribune, a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government, and statewide issues.
