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President Joe Biden on Wednesday issued an executive order quashing the Trump administration’s efforts to make nearly all undocumented immigrants a priority for arrest.
The ordinance was issued along with others focused on immigration. This is the start of an overhaul that is expected not only of the Department of Homeland Security, but of its components, including immigration and customs enforcement. Under former President Donald Trump, ICE faced a torrent of criticism from advocates and politicians for suggesting that sanctuary city leaders be accused of crimes, carrying out massive raids on construction sites and carry out other operations targeting families of undocumented immigrants.
“My administration’s policy is to protect national and border security, address humanitarian challenges on the southern border, and ensure public health and safety,” Biden wrote in his order. “We must also respect the rule of law, while preserving the dignity and well-being of all families and communities.”
Biden ordered homeland security officials to “take action, including issuing revised guidelines, where appropriate and in accordance with applicable law, that advance the policy set out in Section 1 of this ordinance.”
An ICE official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he believed the decision “will kick immigration law enforcement into a clean slate and I hope the administration will develop thoughtful priorities in the future.
The order is part of what should be Biden’s effort to revert to a model of concentrating ICE enforcement efforts against people with serious criminal histories and restricting so-called collateral arrests, which occur when An immigrant who happens to be in the same location of a government target is also arrested.
The directive rescinds Trump’s own order in 2017 that made almost all undocumented immigrants a priority for arrest. Shortly thereafter, ICE prosecutors were prevented from granting stays to some immigrants threatened with deportation and were ordered to review and possibly reopen previously closed cases, which was revealed to the first time by BuzzFeed News through Freedom of Information Act requests.
Soon the proportion of immigrants without prior criminal conviction who were arrested and placed in deportation proceedings exploded.
Reports of ICE’s deportation of sympathetic immigrants, including an oncology nurse in Oakland, have become commonplace. ICE has also arrested potential adult sponsors who have come forward to care for unaccompanied immigrant children who had been held in government shelters.
And when ICE stepped up its operations targeting states and cities with sanctuary laws that restricted cooperation between local authorities and federal immigration officials, the gap only widened. When some mayors and governors refused to budge, ICE paid for billboards with photographs of “wanted” immigrants in the same areas.
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