Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-58_i425.pdf
Page Number: 66.0

24 

UNITED STATES v. TEXAS 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

Judiciary.  And it renders States already laboring under the 
effects of massive illegal immigration even more helpless.

Our Constitution gives the President important powers,
and the precise extent  of some of them has long been the 
subject of contention, but it has been widely accepted that 
“the President’s power reaches ‘its lowest ebb’ when he con-
travenes the express will of Congress, ‘for what is at stake
is  the  equilibrium  established  by  our  constitutional  sys-
tem.’ ”  Zivotofsky v. Kerry, 576 U. S. 1, 61 (2015) (ROBERTS, 
C. J., dissenting) (quoting Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. 
Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 637–638 (1952) (Jackson, J., concur-
ring)). 

That is the situation here.  To put the point simply, Con-
gress enacted a law that requires the apprehension and de-
tention  of  certain  illegal  aliens  whose  release,  it  thought, 
would endanger public safety.  The Secretary of DHS does 
not agree with that categorical requirement.  He prefers a 
more flexible policy.  And the Court’s answer today is that 
the  Executive’s  policy  choice  prevails  unless  Congress,  by 
withholding funds, refusing to confirm Presidential nomi-
nees, threatening impeachment and removal, etc., can win 
a test of strength.  Relegating Congress to these disruptive 
measures  radically  alters  the  balance  of  power  between 
Congress and the Executive, as well as the allocation of au-
thority between the Congress that enacts a law and a later 
Congress that must go to war with the Executive if it wants 
that law to be enforced.9 

—————— 

9  The  majority  suggests  that  any  law  that  constrains  an  Executive’s 
“enforcement discretion” is “highly unusual,” and notes that the States 
cite  no  “similarly  worded  federal  laws”  that  “require  the  Executive 
Branch to make arrests or bring prosecutions” in other, non-immigration 
contexts.  Ante,  at  12.  But  there  is  nothing  peculiar  about  Congress’s 
reserving  its mandates  for  an  area—immigration—where  it  both  exer-
cises  particularly  broad  authority,  Fiallo  v.  Bell,  430  U. S.  787,  792 
(1977),  and  identifies  a  unique  “wholesale  failure”  by  the  enforcement
authority, Demore v. Kim, 538 U. S. 510, 518 (2003).