A Trump judge seized control of ICE, and the Supreme Court will decide whether to stop him

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : The Supreme Court has long acknowledged that law enforcement, by its very nature, requires police and similar officials to make decisions about which arrests to make, which enforcement actions to bring, and how to allocate the limited number of officers employed by an agency.
50% : This general rule, that law enforcement agencies, not judges, should decide their own enforcement priorities, is known as "prosecutorial discretion," and it is one of the fundaments of how police and prosecutors operate at all levels of the government.
49% : As a threshold matter, it's important to understand why Mayorkas must have authority to set enforcement priorities for ICE.
49% : This principle, the Court added, "is attributable in no small part to the general unsuitability for judicial review of agency decisions to refuse enforcement."
48% : In July, a Trump appointee to a federal court in Texas effectively seized control of parts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency that enforces immigration laws within US borders.
48% : Tipton claims, for example, that Mayorkas was required to complete a time-consuming process known as "notice and comment" before he could set new priorities for ICE.
44% : The case involves a memo that Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas issued in September 2021, instructing ICE agents to prioritize undocumented immigrants who "pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security and thus threaten America's well-being" when making arrests or otherwise enforcing immigration law.
44% : And the second provides that "nothing in this section shall be construed to create any substantive or procedural right or benefit that is legally enforceable by any party against the United States or its agencies or officers or any other person."Both Congress and the Supreme Court, in other words, told Tipton not to interfere with Secretary Mayorkas's decisions regarding law enforcement priorities.
41% : So it is literally impossible for ICE to arrest or otherwise bring enforcement actions against every undocumented immigrant in the country.
39% : And for that entire time, Mayorkas will have been prevented from exercising his statutory authority over ICE.
36% : And it has warned courts not to interfere with these kinds of decisions, especially when law enforcement decides not to target someone for arrest or enforcement.
32% : So if the leaders of a law enforcement agency decide that a particular class of people are not a high priority for enforcement, even if those individuals have violated federal law, Heckler says that judges like Drew Tipton should generally stay the heck away from that decision.

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