ICE announced Friday that it will allow illegal immigrants who have been ordered deported to beg for leniency under President Biden’s new non-deportation guidelines.
Tae D. Johnson, acting director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the program is an exercise of “prosecutorial discretion.”
“The case review process provides an avenue for noncitizens and their representatives to request further review of the individual facts and circumstances of their case in light of ICE’s priorities for enforcement, detention, and removal, offering additional transparency into the immigration process,” the director said.
Migrants facing imminent deportation will be given priority in the review process, ICE said.
The agency has released new guidelines severely restricting the universe of people likely to be deported. Those who pose national security risks, those who became unauthorized migrants Nov. 1 or later, and those with the most serious criminal records are still considered deportable, but most others are not deemed priorities.
Those guidelines had applied to new arrests, but Mr. Johnson’s announcement appears to extend the guidelines to create a new avenue to challenge deportations.
It’s not clear how many people would be affected, but ICE has a huge backlog of cases, with 1.2 million people currently awaiting deportation, according to documents the agency filed in court last month.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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