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June 23 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Biden administration's border enforcement guidelines Friday, rejecting a challenge from Louisiana and Texas. The Biden administration's 2021 guidelines refocused immigration enforcement on "national security, public safety and border security," allowing border agents to use their discretion on whether or not certain enforcement actions are warranted.
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"We will focus our efforts on the greatest threats while also recognizing that the majority undocumented non-citizens, who have been here for many years and who have contributed positively to our country's well-being, are not priorities for removal," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wrote when unveiling the policy update in 2021.
In practice, the guidelines allow more asylum seekers and migrants to remain in the country while their cases are considered, a reversal of the Trump Administration's policy.
Louisiana and Texas sued to stop the implementation of the guidelines, arguing they would allow migrants with criminal records to remain in the country. The plaintiffs also claimed the policy had caused harm to their states by putting pressure on social services.
A lower court ruled previously that the states had standing to challenge the guidelines based on claims of strain on state resources.
The Court examined what injury the plaintiff states could demonstrate, the consequences of a potential reversal of the rules, and the overall legality of the guidelines.
The court ruled that the plaintiffs could not demonstrate injury against them.
In the majority opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the states lacked the standing to challenge Biden's guidelines.
"The states essentially want the federal judiciary to order the executive branch to alter its arrest policy so as to make more arrests," Kavanaugh wrote for the majority.
"This court has long held 'that a citizen lacks the standing to contest the policies of the prosecuting authority when he himself is neither prosecuted nor threatened with prosecution,'" Kavanaugh wrote.
Kavanaugh argued that if the court had sided with the plaintiffs, it "could anticipate complaints in future years about alleged executive branch under-enforcement of any similarly worded laws."
"Federal courts prevent the judicial process from being used to usurp the powers of the political branches," Kavanaugh said.
Justice Samual Alito was the sole dissenting voice on the court.
"The district court's factual findings, which must be accepted unless clearly erroneous, quantified the cost of criminal supervision of aliens who should have been held in DHS custody and also identified other burdens that Texas had borne and would continue to bear going forward," Alito wrote in his dissenting opinion.
