President Trump issued an executive order (EO) titled “Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions,” which rescinded a number of EOs on a variety of topics, and which included a handful of EOs on immigration that were issued by President Biden. These include:
- Executive Order 13993 of January 20, 2021 (Revision of Civil Immigration Enforcement Policies and Priorities)
- Executive Order 14010 of February 2, 2021 (Creating a Comprehensive Regional Framework To Address the Causes of Migration, To Manage Migration Throughout North and Central America, and To Provide Safe and Orderly Processing of Asylum Seekers at the United States Border)
- Executive Order 14011 of February 2, 2021 (Establishment of Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families)
- Executive Order 14012 of February 2, 2021 (Restoring Faith in Our Legal Immigration Systems and Strengthening Integration and Inclusion Efforts for New Americans)
- Executive Order 14013 of February 4, 2021 (Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs To Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration)
The rescission of EO 13993 is significant to the entire system of immigration enforcement. Its issuance by President Biden directed his administration to set priorities for immigration enforcement, which were eventually codified in a DHS memorandum, “Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law,” which was issued on September 30, 2021. It directed DHS to use prosecutorial discretion when enforcing immigration laws and to focus enforcement on threats to national security, public safety, and border security—and importantly for workers—acknowledged that immigration status can be used by unscrupulous employers to retaliate against workers seeking to assert their rights (as well as by landlords against tenants). The memo sets out that “[a] noncitizen’s exercise of workplace or tenant rights, or service as a witness in a labor or housing dispute, should be considered a mitigating factor in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion.”.
EO 13993 itself rescinded EO 13768 of January 25, 2017, issued by the first Trump administration, which set out its immigration enforcement priorities. Biden’s EO 13993 was challenged in court and its directives were enjoined, with the case eventually ending up before the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled in July 2023 that President Biden had the authority to set priorities for how his administration conducts immigration enforcement. (See this EPI blog post on the impact of the decision.)