Administration seeks Supreme Court OK on deportation policy

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow it to put in place guidance that prioritizes deportation of people in the country illegally who pose the greatest public safety risk. The emergency request to the court follows conflicting decisions by federal appeals courts in recent days over a September directive from the Homeland Security Department that paused deportation unless individuals had committed acts of terrorism, espionage or “egregious threats to public safety.” The federal appeals court in Cincinnati overturned a district judge’s order that put the policy on hold in a lawsuit filed by Arizona, Ohio and Montana. The judge’s order “is disrupting DHS’s efforts to focus its limited resources on the noncitizens who pose the gravest threat to national security, public safety, and the integrity of our Nation’s borders,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in the Supreme Court filing. Even while disagreeing on many aspects of the immigration issue, the two administrations did find common ground in one respect, calling for the court to limit the power of “single district judges to dictate national policy.” Prelogar, following her predecessors in the Trump administration, bemoaned an explosion of lawsuits filed by states of one party against a president of the other party.