Secretary Mayorkas announced new ICE enforcement guidelines recently. These guidelines give an idea to immigration agencies on arrests and deportations. Tom Holdem, former director of ICE, spoke on Fox News and complained that the new guidelines would destroy immigration. Let’s look at the facts behind the guidelines.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House, March 1, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
What do the new ICE enforcement guidelines mean?
These guidelines are best viewed as a framework, not a set of specific instructions. For instance, the memo begins by highlighting prosecutorial discretion, the idea that we must pick and choose what laws to enforce. In addition, immigrants are an important part of our society and it would be impossible to arrest everyone.
With prosecutorial discretion in mind, the memo provides three levels of priorities:
- Terrorists and threats to national security
- Threats to public safety
- Recent border law violations
If you would like to read more about the guidelines, you can find a great report by the National Immigrant Justice Center with more details.
What’s wrong with these guidelines?
The main problems with these guidelines are that they don’t protect asylum-seekers enough. ICE has a long history of cruelty to immigrants. For example, you can check out our prior podcast looking into the racism of our immigration system. On top of that, we don’t know whether immigration will actually implement the changes.
What’s good about these guidelines?
These guidelines finally recognize the value that immigrants bring to our society. Also, the guidelines have ways to make increase effectiveness like training, data collection, and an individual case review process.
While the guidelines may not be perfect, they are a good start. Knowing that, if you have a loved one that may face deportation, you need to know about these guidelines.
You may contact our law office to schedule a paid consultation if you have a loved one that needs help fighting deportation.