Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito stood alone last week in opposing a majority ruling that Louisiana and Texas lacked standing to challenge a Biden administration immigration policy.
The high court, in an 8–1 decision (pdf), ruled that the state challengers lacked standing to file a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s immigration enforcement priorities that were unveiled in 2021. Last week, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas welcomed the the order, claiming that it clears the way for enforcement guidelines that he announced at the time.
“According to Texas and Louisiana, the arrest policy spelled out in the Department of Homeland Security’s 2021 Guidelines does not comply with the statutory arrest mandates in §1226(c) and §1231(a)(2). The States want the Federal Judiciary to order the Department to alter its arrest policy so that the Department arrests more noncitizens,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority. “The threshold question is whether the States have standing under Article III to maintain this suit. The answer is no.”…