The ruling of a federal judge in Texas on Thursday that blocks the new rules that limited the deportations of the Immigration and Customs Service (ICE, in English) will have great repercussions in the operation of the agency, according to internal documents consulted by the news portal BuzzFeed News.
ICE prosecutors received an email on Friday
telling them
that they will no longer be able to rely on a memorandum from the Biden Administration that
gave
them
wide discretion to decide which cases to prioritize and which to dismiss.
Which complicates the government's plan to lighten the burden on immigration courts
.
The memorandum limited the migrants that ICE agents could arrest, calling for those deemed a security threat and felony offenders to take priority.
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But the order of Judge Drew Tipton of the Federal Court of the Southern District of Texas also affects the work of immigration prosecutors.
According to the aforementioned outlet, John Trasviña, the main attorney for ICE, said that Tripton's order means that prosecutors will no longer be able to rely on the Administration's memorandum to
dismiss cases against immigrants who have been permanent residents for a long time, are women. pregnant, have serious health problems, or have been in the country since they were children or adolescents.
"In practical terms, they may continue to exercise traditional discretion in individual cases in accordance with their best judgment and as permitted by law, but cease any affirmative review or consideration of requests for procedural discretion as per the parameters of my memorandum," Trasviña wrote.
For defenders of the rights of migrants, it is
a new judicial setback suffered by the Administration
to the detriment of the most vulnerable people.
[The Government tries to stop the arrival of migrant families by facilitating their rapid expulsion after crossing the border]
“Despite always having the power to reunite immigrant families, today's director Trasviña's directive means that immigrant communities will continue to suffer for an indefinite future,” Sophia Gurulé, Bronx immigration policy advisor, told BuzzFeedNews. Defenders.
Immigration prosecutors make decisions that affect the volume of cases handled by the courts on a daily basis, since they have the power to prosecute or dismiss them.
Therefore, the annulment of the memorandum is a blow to the Biden Administration's plan to accelerate the processes in the immigration courts, which face
a delay of more than 1.2 million cases
.
With fewer tools to dispose of cases that they do not consider a priority, more processes will end up in the already saturated courts.
Officials with the Department of Homeland Security argued that the memorandum made it easier for ICE prosecutors to choose the cases that were most worth prosecuting, freeing up valuable time from the hands of judges.