5. Department of Homeland Security · Notable · Needs Congress
Restrict prosecutorial discretion in immigration cases by statute
Printed page 150 5. Department of Homeland Security
“Prosecutorial discretion. Congress should restrict the authority for prosecutorial discretion to eliminate it as a "catch-all" excuse for limiting immigration enforcement.”
What has happened
- Not started
Congress has not restricted prosecutorial discretion in immigration enforcement. The administration's own practice has narrowed it — EO 14159 section 4 tells component heads to set enforcement priorities and the department abandoned the previous administration's discretion guidance — but that is a policy choice a later administration can reverse, which is what the Quote wants statute to prevent.
No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
A Requires-Congress ask.
Searched, in the federal records we keep (fetched 2026-08-28): presidential documents, final rules, proposed rules and notices in the Federal Register, filtered to DHS and its components; bills in Congress and public laws, from congress.gov; White House presidential actions; and federal court dockets (CourtListener), including the bulk snapshot of 1.2 million dockets. No bill restricting the authority for prosecutorial discretion in immigration cases was found to have passed either chamber, and Federal Register full-text search for “prosecutorial discretion” over DHS and DOJ rulemaking in the window returns nothing on point.
- Action
- restrict
- Object
- prosecutorial discretion authority
- ID
- 363