The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on November 29 on whether the Biden administration has the right to decide which undocumented immigrants federal agents should prioritize for deportation.

This is the Texas v. Biden case that reached the Supreme Court after Texas and Louisiana sued the Biden administration in April 2021 for changing immigration law enforcement priorities after Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, issued a memo instructing immigration agents to deport only undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes or who pose a risk to public safety.

According to the Texas Tribune, “Chief Justice John Roberts said that if Congress has already approved a law that says the federal government shall deport any immigrant that has been convicted of a crime and is ordered deported, the court’s job is to affirm that interpretation. The federal government has argued it doesn’t have the resources to deport the country’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants. Texas, which sued the Biden administration and has so far been successful in blocking its policy, argued that under federal immigration law, the government has the duty todeport every undocumented immigrant”.

The states argued that Mayorkas’ memo was illegal, and U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, an appointee of former President Donald Trump based in Corpus Christi, ruled in the states’ favor last year.

“During the Obama administration, which issued similar guidance to immigration agents, the priority guidelines were necessary because Congress allocated only enough money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport about 400,000 undocumented immigrants a year, according to a 2014 U.S. Department of Justice memo. Mayorkas’ memo said Congress still has not allocated enough money to target every undocumented immigrant in the country”, according the same publication.

In Tuesday’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court, the states argued that the federal government is selectively enforcing immigration law and that because some undocumented immigrants are not being deported, the states are incurring costs for incarceration, education and health care.

Elizabeth B. Prelogar, Solicitor General with the Department of Justice, argued that the federal government didn’t stop enforcing immigration law but instead is using its resources efficiently.

“This is not about reducing enforcement of immigration laws. It’s about prioritizing limited resources to, say, go after Person A instead of Person B, and there’s no reason to conclude that that’s actually going to lead to less enforcement against individuals overall,” she said.

“The liberal justices, who are in the minority on the court, seemed dismissive of Texas’ arguments, saying that the federal government oversees immigration enforcement and can determine how to best use its resources to arrest and deport immigrants, the Texas Tribune noted”.

A decision on the case is expected before June 2023.