The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to let immigration agencies implement a policy that sets enforcement priorities, after lower courts blocked it as part of a legal challenge brought by officials from Texas and Louisiana.
The policy, issued by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a September memo, instructs agents to prioritize three categories of immigrants for arrest and detention: recent border crossers, national security threats and those with certain serious criminal convictions who pose a threat to public safety.
But Judge Drew Tipton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, a Donald Trump appointee, stopped the immigration enforcement guidance last month. And a federal appeals court on Wednesday declined to reverse that ruling.
