Republican Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and James Lankford (R-OK) despatched a letter to U.S. Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) SecretaryAlejandro Mayorkas pushing him to finish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) “prosecutorial discretion” coverage.
In April, ICE’s Workplace of the Principal Authorized Advisor (OPLA) issued a memo to the company that supplied company officers with “prosecutorial discretion” to implement immigration legal guidelines towards sure migrants the company deems an instantaneous menace.
OPLA’s memo relied on Mayorkas’s September memo to immigration officers that inspired them to make “a case-by-case evaluation of whether or not a person poses a menace.”
Because the Heart of Immigration Research’ Andrew R. Arthur defined, OPLA’s memo “was, primarily, a directive to ICE attorneys to tank instances that didn’t match inside an earlier memo.”
Arthur continued:
In her memo, [ICE Principal Legal Advisor Kerry] Doyle directed ICE’s legal professionals — the parents paid by you to signify your pursuits in immigration court docket — to overview their pending instances and decide whether or not they’re “priorities” for enforcement motion underneath the Mayorkas memo, assuming they haven’t been “labeled for prioritization” already.
Nonetheless, Mayorkas’s memo was vacated final month by Decide Drew Tipton of the U.S. District Courtroom for the Southern District of Texas.
The senators argued that OPLA’s directive ought to be thrown out as a result of a federal decide vacated the underlying memo by Mayorkas.
ICE’s OPLA is headed by Kerry E. Doyle, a former profession protection lawyer and frequent critic of the company.
Grassley mentioned:
Secretary Mayorkas and the Division of Homeland Safety are charged with totally and faithfully implementing our immigration legal guidelines. This memo from the Principal Authorized Advisor inside ICE was misguided and is one more Biden Administration initiative designed to severely undermine sturdy enforcement of our nation’s immigration legal guidelines. Given the latest federal court docket ruling vacating Secretary Mayorkas’ September 30 memo, we have to know that DHS will quickly rescind this OPLA steerage memo as nicely, and begin doing its job and implement our legal guidelines. In any other case, the unlawful immigration disaster instigated by this administration’s irresponsible insurance policies will solely worsen.
Grassley and Lankford requested Mayorkas to offer an finish date for the OPLA memo and extra data associated to the company’s software of prosecutorial discretion.
