The orders from Joe Biden’s White House keep flying at a fast and furious pace, particularly when it comes to America’s policies regarding illegal immigration. The latest announcement deals with how and where ICE agents are allowed to make arrests of illegal aliens. It’s a topic we’ve covered here before and previous policies under the Trump administration had given progressives yet another reason to set their hair on fire. But now that Joe Biden’s people are in charge, more changes are on the way. Immigration enforcement officials from ICE or the Border Patrol will not be allowed to arrest any illegal aliens at courthouses “unless there is a public safety threat.” Given the circumstances that generally result in such arrests being made, this would make performing their work significantly more dangerous if ICE was actually still arresting illegal aliens. Which they don’t seem to be thanks to Joe Biden. But I suppose I’m just nitpicking now. (Buzzfeed)

On Tuesday, the Biden administration will issue a policy that sharply limits the immigrants whom ICE officers can arrest at courthouses after years of criticism of the practice, according to government officials and documents. The policy also applies to US Customs and Border Protection officials as well.

“Ensuring that individuals have access to the courts advances the fair administration of justice, promotes safety for crime victims, and helps to guarantee equal protection under the law,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “The expansion of civil immigration arrests at courthouses during the prior administration had a chilling effect on individuals’ willingness to come to court or work cooperatively with law enforcement. Today’s guidance is the latest step in our efforts to focus our civil immigration enforcement resources on threats to homeland security and public safety.”

As I said, this would be a big deal if Open Borders Joe and Mayorkas hadn’t already told ICE and Customs and Border Protection to stop deporting illegal aliens. At this point, there doesn’t seem to be much point in arresting them if they’re just going to be given a pat on the head and sent back out onto the streets.

But let’s just say for a moment that ICE was still allowed to arrest illegal aliens and schedule them for deportation hearings. As we’ve discussed here in the past, tracking down people who frequently have no permanent address of record isn’t always easy. And even if you’re able to pin down a location where they might be found, going after them on their own turf in unfriendly (to law enforcement) neighborhoods raises the stakes in terms of officer safety. We’ve seen multiple interviews with ICE agents where they describe how sometimes the only place where you can catch up with one and also be confident that they aren’t packing a weapon is at a courthouse.

Cutting off that opportunity is hardly justified by saying they might be coming to testify against someone else in a trial. The vast majority of times that an illegal alien is at a courthouse is because they are the subject of the scheduled proceedings. But at least this new Biden administration policy provides for some exceptions when a courthouse arrest would be allowed, right? Let’s see what those exceptions include.

Arrests at a courthouse can still be made if “it involves a national security matter, a risk of imminent death or harm to anyone, or a hot pursuit involving a public safety threat. Officers may also make an arrest at a courthouse if it appears evidence in a criminal case will be imminently destroyed.”

The first question that leaps to mind is how the officers are supposed to know if there may be a risk of imminent death or harm to anyone unless they go to the courthouse. As far as national security threats go, illegal aliens are in violation of our federal immigration laws and pose a threat based on nothing more than that. I suppose the hot pursuit clause is reasonable, but how often is the hot pursuit of an illegal alien going to end at a courthouse unless that’s where the suspect was heading to begin with? The question of evidence in a criminal case being imminently destroyed seems nonsensical because how would the agents know there was any physical evidence present when attempting to make the arrest?

All of these policies will need to be reversed the next time a Republican takes the White House and then I suppose we can start the entire rinse and repeat cycle all over again. But as I said at the top, these questions are largely hypothetical because it doesn’t sound like ICE is in the business of arresting people very much these days. But hey… at least Joe Biden got another cool headline at Buzzfeed out of it.