There are more than 1 million people in this country with final orders of removal. People that have been afforded due process for their asylum and immigration claims, but were unsuccessful. Some have been in the country for more than a decade.
The current administration has done little to enforce those deportation orders, unlike the Obama and Trump administrations.
There are another at least 300,000 with deportable criminal convictions who have been allowed to remain while their asylum cases are pending.
Approximately 3% of all students over stay their student visas every year. This number is now over a million people. Little is done to enforce these over stays.
These are Congress’ own numbers.
Operationally, the difficulty is not deporting the entire state of Texas, which would be cumbersome, it’s returning them to their country of origin - who has little interest in providing social services to returned felons, orphaned children, and people who will flee the country again.
During the process of deporting persons who should be removed, officers inevitably encounter persons who are not authorized to remain who are much more sympathetic. So deporting cartel members becomes difficult when they reside with their undocumented 91 year old grandmother and niece who is 8 months pregnant.
These are complicated issues with multiple overlapping priorities. Each with its own downside.
The system is broken and needs to be fixed. That doesn’t absolve the executive branch’s obligation to enforce all laws. Or empower the executive to invoke broad discretionary authority to not enforce laws on the grounds of expediency or efficiency to reach discrete political ends.
