San Francisco native John Trasvina has taken over as the top attorney at ICE.
Trasvina previously was the dean of the University of San Francisco Law School and has held positions in prior administrations and on capitol hill.
"When then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein appointed him to the San Francisco Citizens Advisory Committee on Elections in 1980, he was the second-youngest mayoral appointee in San Francisco history."
BREAKING: Judge Tipton blocks the Biden administration's 100 day deportation moratorium.
Big initial loss for the Biden administration as it moves forward with its immigration policies.
"the January 20 Memorandum not only fails to consider potential policies more limited in scope and time, but it also fails to provide any concrete, reasonable justification for a
100-day pause on deportations."
"Texas demonstrates that it pays millions of dollars annually to provide social services and uncompensated healthcare expenses and other state-provided benefits to illegal aliens such as the Emergency Medicaid program"
Ashley Tabaddor, formerly head of the union representing immigration judges, will take over as the lead attorney at US Citizenship and Immigration Services (chief counsel).
Tabaddor was frequently pushing back on the Trump administration's changes to the immigration courts.
Government attorney says they now understand that Trump's DHS "has kind of signed over its rights to many state and local jurisdictions" and that it is "completely unenforceable."
The judge is very focused on releases from ICE detention. The government seems to be struggling to answer some of his questions.
Government says those released from ICE detention were released per previous litigation over COVID. Those are the only releases from detention that the government knows.
NEW late night filing by the government arguing that the agreement Texas signed with Trump's DHS is invalid and cannot be the basis for a judge to block the Biden administration's pause on deportations.
"This Court should reject this attempt to eviscerate the federal government’s plenary power with respect to immigration and should deny Texas’s motion"
"The MOU is Invalid, Unenforceable, and Cannot Be the Basis of Relief for Texas"
NEW: Federal judge Tipton just ended the hearing over Texas' lawsuit seeking to block the Biden administration from pausing deportations for 100 days --- he issued no ruling right away BUT it seems possible he blocks the deportation pause as the case moves forward.
The DOJ attorney, Adam Kirschner, basically said the agreement Texas had signed with Trump's DHS was useless.
Kirschner said that DOJ had serious concerns about the agreement Texas signed with Trump's DHS in January.
He said that Texas was basically asking to "run federal immigration law" and that they were saying that DHS "signed over the statutory rights provided to it by Congress to the state of Texas for 180 days."
STORY: Texas has filed a lawsuit seeking to stop President Biden’s pause on deportations by claiming that the DHS violated the terms of an agreement with the previous administration that guaranteed the state a chance to weigh in on immigration policies.
In December and January, DHS signed agreements with multiple jurisdictions, including the state of Arizona, Indiana, South Carolina, Alabama, and Texas, that appeared to be an effort to hamstring the Biden administration’s goals to pause deportations & make other moves.
Ken Paxton is seeking to block the moratorium by claiming that its immediate implementation violates the agreement the state signed with DHS, along with alleged violations of federal immigration and administrative law.