Immigration rights advocates have expressed some disappointment with the Biden administration's pace of action in recent months and that's understandable, but the administration is also contending with legal landmines left behind by the Trump regime.
The administration has taken direct action at the executive level, but Republicans challenging each move have found themselves a favorable judge who evidently believes he has divine authority over the meaning of words.
One of Trump's judges is now telling the administration they do not have the discretionary authority to pick and choose which immigrants they arrest and must arrest all of them.
U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, in Corpus Christi, Texas, ruled that the February guidance from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency violated a federal law requiring that the government "shall detain" people who commit certain crimes or are otherwise deemed eligible for deportation.
"Put simply, the Government has instructed federal officials that 'shall detain' certain aliens means 'may detain' when it unambiguously means must detain," Tipton wrote. [...]
Tipton, a Trump judicial appointee, in January blocked the Biden administration's 100-day moratorium on deportations. In a decision last week, Tipton also ordered the administration to reinstate a Trump-era policy requiring that asylum applicants be sent to Mexico to await legal proceedings.
Virtually every time the Trump regime rewrote the rules of executive discretion and instructed immigration authorities to arrest everyone they can get their hands on, courts ruled in favor of the regime because federal law grants federal agencies the authority to interpret regulations. But in this case, one of Trump's judges is telling the federal government what the interpretation must be.
The idea the federal authorities do not have discretion over enforcement is preposterous. Even your local beat cop has discretion.
Higher court systems are more than likely going to side with the Biden administration in this case among others for the reasons I just outlined, but Trump's judges are going to make sure it takes them as long as possible to get there.