Federal Judge Unloads on Do-Nothing ICE in Screwed-Up Border Fiasco
‘It is hard to understand why DHS thinks that aliens will take any of Its directives seriously’
By Andrew R. Arthur on July 24, 2023
Last week I discussed a declaration filed by Daniel Bible, deputy executive associate director at ICE’s Enforcement and Operations (ERO), in Florida v. Mayorkas (Florida II). Most days, Bible is the number-two official charged with finding and removing illegal aliens in the United States, but when he signed that declaration on July 17, he became both the face of and the fall-guy for the Biden administration’s catch-and-release policies at the Southwest border as he admitted to a federal judge that ICE wasn’t doing — and likely wouldn’t do — its job by placing 2,108 illegal entrants into removal proceedings. Not surprisingly, the judge wasn’t happy about that answer, noting: “It is hard to understand why DHS thinks that aliens will take any of Its directives seriously”.
Florida I. I explained the history of Florida II in last week's post, but a truncated recap frames the court’s latest order, issued on July 18.
In September 2021, the state of Florida filed a complaint in Florida v. U.S. (Florida I), alleging the Biden administration was “ignoring” a congressional mandate in section 235(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) by refusing to detain illegal border migrants.
After more than a year of argument and discovery in Florida I, the federal judge assigned to that case, T. Kent Wetherell II, issued an opinion largely agreeing with the state’s claims.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Federal-Judge-Unloads-DoNothing-ICE-ScrewedUp-Border-Fiasco
