Supreme Court Uses Fractured Logic to Break Immigration Laws
In the face of mass releases of migrants into this country, the U.S. Supreme Court passed the buck on enforcing immigration law and wrote a blank check for the Biden administration.
The high court’s tortuous decision in United States v. Texas last week held “that the question of whether federal courts have jurisdiction … is distinct from the question of whether the Executive Branch is complying with the relevant statutes. … We hold only that the federal courts are not the proper forum to resolve this dispute.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh – joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson – asserted that Texas and Louisiana did not have legal standing to challenge the executive branch’s manifest failure to uphold immigration law because they weren’t being prosecuted or threatened with prosecution.
Three other justices – Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, and Amy Coney Barrett – disputed this tenuous claim while still supporting the majority’s decision. They recalled that in 2007, the court allowed states to legally contest executive branch policies that indirectly caused them monetary harm. Gorsuch cited Massachusetts v. EPA, which let Democratic states challenge the federal government’s failure to regulate CO2 emissions, even though they weren’t directly harmed.
If anything, the case filed by Texas and Louisiana is stronger than Massachusetts, as states are forced to expend billions of dollars every year to accommodate migrants released into their communities by the federal government.
With eight justices more or less finding for the Biden administration, Justice Samuel Alito called out his temporizing colleagues in a scathing dissent. “The court should not use a practice of selective silence to accept or reject prominently presented standing arguments on inconsistent grounds,” he wrote.
“The majority’s understanding of ‘executive power’ seems to be that a president can disobey statutory commands unless Congress, by flexing its muscles, forces capitulation.”
However, if the eight splintered justices justify their parsing of the law, the American public will see it as punting the ball away and walking off the field.
In the aftermath of this injudicious action – inaction, really – FAIR reminded the court that Congress has clearly spoken, passing multiple statutes requiring the federal government to arrest and detain illegal aliens.
Bizarrely, the Supreme Court has now given carte blanche to the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to instruct his agents to disobey duly enacted laws and instead follow ad hoc policies more to his liking.
Applauding the decision, Alejandro Mayorkas wasted no time confirming his intentions. He pledged to reinstate DHS’s so-called “sanctuary country” orders that shield most illegal aliens from arrest and deportation.
Is this any way for a republic, ostensibly founded on the rule of law, to conduct itself?