(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost won a nationwide court order today that requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to resume enforcing the law regarding convicted dangerous felons and immigrants who have lost their last appeal to remain in the country.
Under the Biden Administration, DHS had issued a new "interior immigration enforcement policy," ignoring Congress and deporting only a tiny fraction of the persons mandated by federal law.
Deportations fell by two-thirds and Yost sued to enforce the federal law, along with Arizona and Montana, in November. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio granted a preliminary injunction.
"The DHS policy leaves dangerous criminals on our streets who are supposed to be deported under the law," Yost said. "It went further and completely ignored the final deportation orders of immigration courts."
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas crowed about the Department's policy to CBS News in January.
"We have fundamentally changed immigration enforcement in the interior," he said then. "For the first time ever, our policy explicitly states that a non-citizen's unlawful presence in the United States will not, by itself, be a basis for the initiation of an enforcement action."
Yost slammed the Secretary's hubris.
"Bureaucrats don't get to 'fundamentally change' the law," Yost said. "Today, the Court changed it back."
Yost has been at the forefront of state attorneys general challenging the widespread use of administrative rule-making to change or, as here, even subvert laws passed by Congress.
"It's amazing that we had to go to Court to get an order for DHS to do its job, but that's what it's come to with this lawless administration," Yost added. "I will continue to fight to hold the administration accountable."
The policy has been devastating to communities.
Deportations fell to only 59,011 in fiscal year 2021, down from 185,884 in fiscal year 2020, according to the annual report released last week by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The report also stated that ICE officers made only 36,619 administrative arrests of convicted criminals last fiscal year, compared to 123,128 the year before the pandemic.
Today’s nationwide injunction means ICE officers will be allowed to do their jobs, protecting American communities and securing our legal immigration system.
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