Bloomberg Línea — Texas and Louisiana lack authority to challenge the Joe Biden administration’s deportation guidelines, the US Supreme Court has ruled, following the the two states’ lawsuit challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) immigration enforcement policies.
The two states argued that the policies include guidelines to prioritize the detention and deportation of immigrants, but the Supreme Court ruled that they only call for agents to focus on serious and violent crimes.
By an 8-1 vote, the court ruled that the two states lacked the legal standing to bring a lawsuit against one of the first directives issued by the DHS.
“The states essentially want the federal judiciary to order the executive branch to modify its arrest policy to make more arrests,” Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote on behalf of the majority.
The right’s rejoinder
The Supreme Court’s decision highlights the importance of not granting states legitimacy to challenge the federal government’s immigration enforcement policies. In fact, the justices argued that if the lawsuit were allowed, similar problems could arise in relation to the enforcement of other laws, such as those related to drugs or guns.
The decision was met with criticism from the right, arguing that it negatively affected the plaintiff states, as this increases the costs of social services, such as healthcare and education.
Lower courts had ruled in favor of Texas and Louisiana in previous cases, upholding their claims of undue immigration costs. However, the Supreme Court reversed those rulings and upheld the federal government’s authority in this area.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justices Amy Coney-Barrett and Clarence Thomas, agreed that the states demonstrated that the immigration policies increased costs, but noted that the remedies proposed by the lower courts would not solve those problems.
For his part, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas expressed his satisfaction and announced that DHS hopes to reinstate these guidelines, which they consider effective in focusing limited resources and enforcement actions on those who pose a threat to national security.
