Multiple Supreme Court rulings favorable to Donald Trump, particularly those issued through the "shadow docket," have established legal precedents that could allow a future Democratic president to dismantle U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and remove agents conducting street-level immigration enforcement operations.
In a discussion between Slate legal analysts Mark Joseph Stern and Dahlia Lithwick, Stern highlighted significant implications of recent court decisions. The Supreme Court has permitted Trump to impound congressionally approved funds and redirect them to other purposes. Additionally, the court has affirmed that a sitting president possesses broad authority to remove federal employees without restriction.
These precedents establish that future administrations would face minimal legal obstacles in exercising similar executive powers to fundamentally restructure federal agencies or eliminate enforcement operations.
According to Stern, a Democratic president needs to embrace, “the maximalist vision of executive power that Trump has established to undo the damage that he is currently inflicting.”
Proposing, “How does that cash out?” he answered, “... let’s remember that the Supreme Court has now effectively granted the president authority to impound federal funds duly appropriated by Congress and to abolish federal agencies established and funded by Congress,” while noting that he thinks it is unconstitutional -- but that is the state of play now.
Using a hypothetical of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NT) becoming the 48th president of the United States, he proposed, “... she needs to impound ICE’s budget. She needs to refuse to spend the billions of dollars that Congress has appropriated to the agency and fire tens of thousands of immigration agents immediately, starting with those who committed acts of violence and discrimination—which, by that point, may be almost all of them.”
Having suggested that, he added, “Fire CBP chief Greg Bovino. Fire every single agent who participated in the horrific operations in Chicago, D.C., and L.A. Refuse to pay out a penny in benefits to any agent who broke the law. Release all the information about ICE and CBP’s immigration sweeps, including the names of every agent who participated. Start investigations and prosecutions of any law-breaking agent whom Trump doesn’t pardon.”
Stern suggested that some funds Congress allocated for ramping up ICE enforcement should be diverted to bring those who were rounded up and shipped out of the country without due process be brought back and then noted, “This would be 100 percent legal under the precedent established by Trump and the Supreme Court.”
He also pointed out that Trump has already established precedent for those actions, with the Court’s benign approval, recalling, “Remember: Trump has illegally fired tens of thousands of civil servants, closed agencies like USAID unilaterally, refused to pay out billions of dollars appropriated by Congress, halted our refugee program, shuttered the Education Department, paid reparations to Jan. 6 defendants and quite possibly himself.”
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