The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for President Biden’s administration to shift the government’s immigration enforcement priorities to focus on people who recently crossed the border or are a threat to public safety. Voting 8-1 to reject two states, Texas and Louisiana, the justices lifted a lower court ruling that had blocked the Biden apprehension and deportation policy as violating federal law, reports Bloomberg Law. The administration plans to end a Trump administration approach that focuses more broadly on anyone in the country without authorization. "The statutes, even under the States’ own reading, simply say that the Department “shall” arrest certain noncitizens. Given the “deep-rooted nature of law enforcement discretion,” a purported statutory arrest mandate, without more, does not entitle any particular plaintiff to enforce that mandate in federal court," the Supreme Court decision reads.
Writing for the court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the states lacked legal standing to challenge the policy shift. Justice Samuel Alito was the lone dissenter. It’s the second immigration victory for the administration at the Supreme Court in as many years. The court last year let Biden end a Trump-era policy that had forced asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for their cases to be processed. The case is separate from a clash over the Title 42 border restrictions that applied during the pandemic. The Supreme Court last month scrapped a scheduled showdown over Title 42 after the Biden administration ended the emergency declaration that had formed the policy’s legal basis.
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