Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-58_i425.pdf
Page Number: 45.0

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

3 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

radical theory and instead holds only that, with some small
and equivocal limitations that I will discuss, no party may 
challenge the Executive’s “arrest and prosecution policies.” 
Ante, at 12, n. 5.  But the Court provides no principled ex-
planation for drawing the line at this point, and that raises 
the concern that the Court’s only reason for framing its rule 
as it does is that no more is needed to dispose of this case. 
In future cases, Presidential power may be extended even
further.  That  disturbing  possibility  is  bolstered  by  the 
Court’s  refusal  to  reject  the  Government’s  broader  argu-
ment. 

As I will explain, nothing in our precedents even remotely 
supports  this  grossly  inflated  conception  of  “executive
Power,” U. S. Const., Art. II, §1, which seriously infringes 
the  “legislative  Powers”  that  the  Constitution  grants  to 
Congress, Art. I, §1.  At issue here is Congress’s authority 
to  control  immigration,  and  “[t]his  Court  has  repeatedly
emphasized that ‘over no conceivable subject is the legisla-
tive  power  of Congress more complete than  it  is  over’  the 
admission  of  aliens.”  Fiallo  v.  Bell,  430  U. S.  787,  792 
(1977).  In the exercise of that power, Congress passed and 
President Clinton signed a law that commands the deten-
tion and removal of aliens who have been convicted of cer-
tain  particularly  dangerous  crimes.    The  Secretary  of 
Homeland Security, however, has instructed his agents to
disobey this legislative command and instead follow a dif-
ferent policy that is more to his liking.  And the Court now 
says that no party injured by this policy is allowed to chal-
lenge it in court. 

That holding not only violates the Constitution’s alloca-
tion of authority among the three branches of the Federal 
Government;  it  also  undermines  federalism.   This  Court 
has  held  that  the  Federal  Government’s  authority  in  the 
field of immigration severely restricts the ability of States 
to enact laws or follow practices that address harms result-
ing from illegal immigration.  See Arizona v. United States,