Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Biden administration makes more areas off-limits for immigration arrests

Immigration agents are now forbidden from making arrests in “protected areas” or “sensitive locations" where people receive essential services.

(CN) — The Biden administration imposed new guidelines Wednesday barring immigration enforcement arrests in schools, hospitals, churches, playgrounds and numerous other locations.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agents must adhere to the new rules when conducting enforcement actions by determining if a location is an off-limits “protected area” or “sensitive location” where people receive essential services.

“We can accomplish our law enforcement mission without denying individuals access to needed medical care, children access to their schools, the displaced access to food and shelter, people of faith access to their places of worship, and more,” Mayorkas said in a statement.

“Adherence to this principle is a bedrock of our stature as public servants,” he added.

Mayorkas said the protected areas include, but are not limited to, Covid-19 vaccination sites, school bus stops, children’s group homes, domestic violence shelters, disaster relief centers and parades and rallies. This expands on a policy initiated during the Obama administration in 2011 that barred arrests at schools and churches.

It is a marked departure from the hardline tactics ICE agents employed under President Donald Trump, routinely arresting and interrogating immigrants at courthouses as they tried to pay traffic tickets, get marriage licenses, obtain restraining orders against abusive partners or after they appeared as witnesses in hearings.

During Trump’s tenure, ICE officers also ignored the Obama guidelines and arrested undocumented parents while they were dropping their kids off at school, carrying out Trump’s crackdown in which essentially everyone in the country without lawful status was at risk of being deported.

The new rules do not mention courthouses because Mayorkas already issued guidance in April limiting the circumstances in which ICE agents can make arrests in or near courthouses.

This is the third policy change for immigration enforcement in the country’s interior Mayorkas has announced in the past month.

In late September, he unveiled new enforcement guidelines, set to take effect Nov. 29, in which he said immigrants who are national security and public safety threats will continue to be priorities for deportation, but ICE will make individualized assessments, accounting for mitigating factors such as how long one has lived in the U.S. and whether their families depend on their incomes.

On Oct. 12, Mayorkas issued a memo directing ICE to stop rounding up undocumented immigrants in large workplace raids.

“The deployment of mass worksite operations, sometimes resulting in the simultaneous arrest of hundreds of workers, was not focused on the most pernicious aspect of our country's unauthorized employment challenge: exploitative employers,” the memo states.

The changes come as Democratic U.S. senators are struggling to come up with immigration reforms that can pass muster with the Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough for inclusion in President Joe Biden’s marquee legislation, a trillion-dollar social safety net, tax reform and climate bill they are negotiating for passage along party lines in a process called budget reconciliation.

Biden took office promising to work with Congress to create a roadmap to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., most of whom have lived here for decades.

But with bipartisan talks on a standalone immigration bill not making any headway, Democrats see the budget bill as a prime opportunity for reforms.

MacDonough, who interprets the Senate’s standing rules, might prove to be an insurmountable obstacle.

She has already rejected two Democratic proposals for inclusion in the budget-reconciliation package. One would have created a pathway to citizenship for immigrants brought to the country as children, essential workers and those who have been granted temporary protected status.

The other sought to change the Immigration and Nationality Act to allow people to apply for green cards, lawful permanent residence, if they entered the country before a certain date.

MacDonough found the proposals to be too policy oriented to pass Senate rules for reconciliation.

Republicans are trying to leverage Biden’s struggles with immigration ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, noting Border Patrol agents encountered a record 1.73 million immigrants at the Southwest border in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

That figure was inflated, however, by people repeatedly apprehended trying to cross back into the country after they were removed.

It is a no-win situation for Biden. He is also being criticized by fellow Democrats for keeping in place a Trump-era pandemic-related policy in which most immigrants detained entering the U.S. from Mexico are quickly expelled.

Follow @cam_langford
Categories / Civil Rights, Government, National

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...