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Aug. 15, 2017 Memo from ICE Legal on Enforcement Priorities, Prosecutorial Discretion (BuzzFeed)

October 08, 2018 (1 min read)

Hamed Aleaziz, BuzzFeed News, Oct. 8, 2018 - "Attorneys for Immigration and Customs Enforcement were restricted from granting reprieves for certain immigrants facing deportation, ordered to review and potentially reopen previously closed cases, and told that nearly all undocumented immigrants were priorities for deportation, according to a previously unreleased memo obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The memo, which was issued Aug. 15, 2017, and obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, provided a roadmap for how ICE attorneys were to prosecute cases under the Trump administration. It was written by Tracy Short, ICE’s principal legal adviser and head of the attorneys who handle deportation cases in court.

While immigration lawyers had long reported anecdotally that such changes had taken place in the courtroom, the memo is the first detailed explanation of how government attorneys were told to handle deportation cases and how to implement Trump’s executive order on immigration enforcement issued Jan. 25, 2017."