Earlier (2010) by Federale: Will A GOP Congress Block Obama’s Ongoing Administrative Amnesty?
Nothing new is under the sun, especially with the Administrative Amnesties for illegal aliens run by Democrat Presidents. One of the first manifestations of the Obama Regime Administrative Amnesty was the wholesale dropping of deportation cases by ICE SVU, the component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) charged with representing the government in deportation hearings before the Executive Office For Immigration Review (EOIR).
I first let the world know about this back in June 2010, when the head of ICE SVU, John Morton, published his infamous memoranda on administering the Obama Regime Administrative Amnesty. Later the amnesty expanded from ending arrests of illegal aliens to those illegal aliens already arrested and in removal proceedings.
When Trump came in that amnesty ended, and those cases that had been dropped were reopened. But the absurd carousel continues: the Biden Regime has begun their own amnesty for illegal aliens in deportation proceedings.
Federal prosecutors are quietly dismissing stacks of cases against illegal immigrants under a Biden administration mandate that could be on pace to effectively pardon 1 million people by 2024, according to leaked information reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
Attorneys for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have begun to throw out tens of thousands of the 2 million backlogged cases in immigration court following a political appointee’s order not to go after illegal border crossers from before the November 2020 election.
“This is a de facto amnesty,” said an ICE federal prosecutor who spoke with the Washington Examiner on the condition of anonymity.
The Washington Examiner obtained leaked video recordings of virtual meetings that Kerry Doyle, ICE’s principal legal adviser, held with the more than 1,200 ICE prosecutors who bring cases against illegal immigrants nationwide, in which she explained in detail who should not be targeted for deportation. Illegal immigrants identified as national security and public safety threats, or those who had crossed the border illegally after Nov. 1, 2020, would be the only cases ICE would pursue. All others would be dropped.
[Biden Administration Quietly Erasing Immigration Court Caseload: ‘De Facto Amnesty,’ by Anna Giaritelli, Washington Examiner, June 24, 2022]
Kerry Doyle, Amnesty Administrator
The policy of an amnesty for already arrested illegal aliens is billed as prosecutorial discretion and decisions are supposed to be made by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office Of The Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA) attorneys, themselves suspect in any event, representing the government in particular cases. But, in fact, the policy is directed from ICE SVU headquarters, with standing instructions to drop cases, and with the decision-making process merely designed to provide cover for a mass amnesty.
But the ICE attorney said the new policy leaves little room for prosecutors to use their own judgment.
“This mandatory requirement was imposed under the guise of ‘prosecutorial discretion’ and allegedly for the purpose of freeing up busy immigration prosecutors to focus on the most important cases. But this is a canard. There is no actual discretion,” the ICE attorney said. “Do as Doyle commands or else.”
Andrew R. Arthur, former immigration judge and resident fellow of law and policy at the right-leaning Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, pointed out that Doyle’s mandate is illogical and that the administration is forcing attorneys’ hands.
“The whole idea behind ‘prosecutorial discretion’ is that the prosecutor exercises it or not. ‘Mandatory prosecutorial discretion’ is an oxymoron,” Arthur wrote in a recent blog post.
The thumb is on the scale in favor of an administrative amnesty for illegal aliens; there is no “discretion” involved at all.
The Washington Examiner obtained leaked video recordings of virtual meetings that Kerry Doyle, ICE’s principal legal adviser, held with the more than 1,200 ICE prosecutors who bring cases against illegal immigrants nationwide, in which she explained in detail who should not be targeted for deportation. Illegal immigrants identified as national security and public safety threats, or those who had crossed the border illegally after Nov. 1, 2020, would be the only cases ICE would pursue. All others would be dropped.
“As the memo explains — I think pretty clearly — we’ve put our thumb sort of heavily in favor of dismissal and durable solutions,” Doyle told her workforce in a private town hall meeting on April 14. “Even if you’ve spent a lot of time on the case, if it’s a nonpriority, you should be moving to offer [prosecutorial discretion] in that case.”
Doyle, the administrator of this amnesty, is a former Treason Bar Shyster, which is the first time the ICE OPLA has been headed by an attorney without experience in actually enforcing immigration law. It is as if she is the immigration equivalent of a Soros Prosecutor, moving like Chesa Boudin from the Public Defender’s office to the District Attorney’s Office with the intend of ending prosecution of the law, which is exactly what happened.
In any event, the new Republican Congress should defund this aspect of the Biden Regime Administrative Amnesty by prohibiting the spending of public funds to drop immigration charges and requiring that funds be spent reinstating immigration charges.