President Joe Biden on Wednesday issued an executive order to undo the Trump administration’s efforts to make almost every undocumented immigrant a priority for arrest.
The order was issued along with others and focused on immigration. This is the beginning of an expected overhaul of not only the Department of Homeland Security, but also its components, including immigration and customs enforcement. Under former President Donald Trump, ICE has faced a barrage of criticism from lawyers and politicians for proposing that leaders in sanctuary cities be charged with crimes, conducting massive raids and conducting other operations targeting undocumented immigrant families .
“My government’s policy is to protect national and border security, address the humanitarian challenges on the southern border and ensure public health and safety,” Biden wrote in his order. “We must also adhere to the proper legal process as we protect the dignity and well-being of all families and communities.”
Biden has instructed Home Security officials to “take action, including the issuance of revised guidelines, as appropriate and in accordance with applicable law, that promotes the policy set out in Article 1 of this Order.”
One ICE official who spoke on condition of anonymity said he believed the decision would “start immigration on a clean slate and hopefully the government will develop thoughtful priorities.”
The mission is part of Biden’s attempt to return to a model to focus ICE’s enforcement efforts against those with serious criminal backgrounds and to curb 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 overturned Trump’s own order in 2017, which made nearly every undocumented immigrant a priority for arrest. Not long after, ICE prosecutors were limited to granting pardons to certain immigrants facing deportation, ordering them to review and possibly reopen previously closed cases, first revealed by BuzzFeed News through requests from the Freedom of Information Act.
The proportion of non-arresting immigrants arrested and placed in deportation proceedings soon skyrocketed.
News stories about ICE deporting sympathetic immigrants, including a cancer nurse in Oakland, have become commonplace. ICE has also arrested potential sponsors for adults who have come forward to care for children without immigrants detained in government shelters.
And when ICE-focused operations on states and cities were set up with sanctuary laws restricting cooperation between local authorities and federal immigration officials, the gap only widened. When some mayors and governors refused to move, ICE paid for billboards with photos of “wanted” immigrants in the same areas.