https://www.vox.com/23204150/supreme-court-ice-texas-united-states-drew-tipton-immigration
A Trump judge seized control of ICE. Will the Supreme Court stop him?
Are federal law enforcement officers under the command and control of elected officials, or are they free to enforce the law as they choose, targeting the people they want to target, without guidance from an elected leader?
That’s the fundamental question in United States v. Texas, a case that just arrived at the Supreme Court on its “shadow docket.” It asks whether the Biden administration can instruct federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to follow certain enforcement priorities when deciding which undocumented immigrants to apprehend and remove from the country.
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with federal immigration law will be baffled that this issue required litigation, much less that it needs to be resolved by the Supreme Court. Federal law provides that the secretary of Homeland Security “shall be responsible” for “establishing national immigration enforcement policies and priorities.” Thus, immigration enforcement agencies such as ICE are under the control of a senior political official who is responsible to an elected president.
Pursuant to this authority, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memo to ICE’s acting director last September, informing him that the agency should prioritize its enforcement efforts against undocumented or otherwise removable immigrants who “pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security and thus threaten America’s well-being.”
