President Joe Biden issued an executive order on Wednesday undoing the Trump administration’s efforts to make almost all undocumented migrants a prison priority.
The order was issued along with others focusing on immigration. This is the beginning of an expected review not only of the Department of Homeland Security, but of its components, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Under former President Donald Trump, the ICE faced a torrent of criticism from defenders and politicians for suggesting that leaders in sanctuary cities should be accused of crimes, conducting massive raids on workplaces and carrying out other operations aimed at undocumented immigrant families.
“My government’s policy is to protect national and border security, address humanitarian challenges on the southern border and ensure public health and safety,” wrote Biden in his request. “We must also comply with due legal process to safeguard the dignity and well-being of all families and communities.”
Biden instructed homeland security officials to “act, including issuing revised guidelines, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to advance the policy set out in section 1 of this request.”
An ICE official who spoke on condition of anonymity said he believed the decision “will start immigration enforcement from scratch and, hopefully, the government will develop well-thought-out priorities in the future.”
The order is part of what is expected to be a Biden effort to return to a model of focusing ICE enforcement efforts against people with a serious criminal record and to restrict so-called collateral arrests, which occur when an immigrant who happens to be in even the location of a government target was also arrested.
The directive nullifies Trump’s own order in 2017, which made almost all undocumented migrants a priority for prison. Not long after, ICE prosecutors were prevented from awarding damages to certain immigrants facing deportation and were ordered to review and potentially reopen previously closed cases, which was first revealed by BuzzFeed News through Freedom Act requests. of information.
Therefore, the proportion of immigrants without previous criminal convictions who were being arrested and placed in the process of deportation soared.
News of ICE’s deportation of sympathetic immigrants, including an oncology nurse in Oakland, has become commonplace. ICE also arrested potential adult sponsors who came forward to care for unaccompanied immigrant children who had been kept in government shelters.
And when ICE stepped up operations targeting states and cities with sanctuary laws that restricted cooperation between local authorities and federal immigration officials, the division only increased. When some mayors and governors refused to budge, ICE paid for billboards with photos of “wanted” immigrants in the same areas.