Ohio, Arizona, and Montana Sue Biden Administration Over Enforcement Priorities Memo
Just yesterday Ohio Attorney General David Yost along with Attorneys General from Arizona and Montana sued the Biden administration over a new immigration enforcement memo.
The memo, issued by DHS Secretary Mayorkas on September 30 and titled Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law, claims to prioritize immigration enforcement resources around three main categories of immigrants that the agency identifies as: a threat to national security, a threat to public safety, or a threat to border security. The memo also says, “The fact an individual is a removable noncitizen should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them,” signaling that the agency will use its discretion to avoid spending resources deporting every single person they can get their hands on.
Sidenote: I say “claims” here because whether you support or oppose these enforcement priorities, it’s not clear to me at all—without evidence—that they will result in a meaningful change in enforcement practices. I wrote about my skepticism in The Hill recently in regards to a similar memo Mayorkas issued in September around the same time. I was doubtful that it would have a meaningful impact on enforcement practices, and I subtly (or not so subtly) suggested that these memos have more to do with statecraft than meaningful change. Show me the numbers, not the policy. Anyways, back to our main story.
In an official press release related to the lawsuit, Yost claimed, “the federal government wants law enforcement to sit by and do nothing,” and that Ohio bears a financial cost due to what the lawsuit estimates are 89,000 undocumented immigrants living in Ohio. Ohio and its co-litigants are hoping that a judge will suspend Mayorkas’ memo before it goes into effect on November 29. The case was filed in Ohio’s Southern District Court on November 18, 2021 (3:21-cv-00314-MJN-PBS; click here for complaint).
Yost appears to be embracing the litigious role that seems to come with the territory of being a Republican state attorney general these days. Yost has also filed two other lawsuits—private employees and federal contractors—against the federal government recently regarding the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates. During the 2020 election, Yost also wrote a “friend of the court” brief in support of tossing out votes in Pennsylvania, which was part of Donald Trump’s strategy to overturn the free and fair election. A real gem, this one.
For further reading:
See my recent post on data related to pending deportation cases in Ohio which was featured in the Columbus Dispatch.
Follow up on the topic of migrants caught between Belarus and Poland yesterday by seeing how Belarus cleared out the migrant camp yesterday and moved everyone to a warehouse. Click here for NYT article or todays edition of the podcast The Daily which covers this topic:
Thanks for all of your amazing work. Austin!