\n\n“Among President Joe Biden\u2019s key campaign promises on immigration was to end Trump-era policies that threatened all undocumented immigrants with deportation and to identify new priorities for enforcement that protect families, workers, and longtime residents. New guidance issued Thursday is a step toward fulfilling that promise, but it still leaves individual immigration enforcement officers with significant decision-making power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to a memo<\/a> from acting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tae Johnson, the agency will now prioritize people who pose a threat to national security or public safety for deportation, as well as recent arrivals. Specifically, that includes those who have engaged in terrorism or espionage or are suspected of doing so, people over the age of 16 who are members of criminal gangs and transnational criminal organizations, and people who arrived in the US after November 1, 2020. People who were apprehended while trying to cross the border without authorization at any point, even before November 1, are also being targeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The memo doesn\u2019t make people with criminal records into automatic enforcement targets, but it does prioritize those convicted of certain offenses classified as \u201caggravated felonies<\/a>\u201d \u2014 which can include filing a false tax return or failing to appear in court. While those crimes might appear relatively minor, the Obama administration\u2019s deportation guidance targeted people with just a single \u201csignificant misdemeanor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The memo represents a departure from Trump-era policies in which any immigrant \u2014 regardless of whether they had committed crimes or how long they had resided in the US \u2014 could have been targeted by ICE, sometimes in wide-scale raids. But it\u2019s less clear whether the memo will allow the Biden administration to meaningfully advance from the Obama-era status quo on immigration enforcement, in which \u201cfelons, not families<\/a>\u201d were supposed to be deported as part of reforms that ICE largely ignored<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “\u201cDespite what some critics may claim, this memo does not block immigration enforcement, but rather makes very clear that ICE officers retain discretion and that no one is completely off limits from apprehension, detention, or removal,\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n