Opinion of the Court
not resolve the Article III consequences of such a policy.
Fifth, policies governing the continued detention of noncitizens who have already been arrested arguably might raise a different standing question than arrest or prosecution policies. Cf. Biden v. Texas, 597 U. S. ___ (2022). But this case does not concern a detention policy, so we do not address the issue here.[1]
D
The discrete standing question raised by this case rarely arises because federal statutes that purport to require the Executive Branch to make arrests or bring prosecutions are rare—not surprisingly, given the Executive’s Article II authority to enforce federal law and the deeply rooted history of enforcement discretion in American law. Indeed, the States cite no similarly worded federal laws. This case therefore involves both a highly unusual provision of federal law and a highly unusual lawsuit.
To be clear, our Article III decision today should in no way be read to suggest or imply that the Executive possesses some freestanding or general constitutional authority to disregard statutes requiring or prohibiting executive action. Moreover, the Federal Judiciary of course routinely and appropriately decides justiciable cases involving statutory requirements or prohibitions on the Executive.
- ↑ This case concerns only arrest and prosecution policies, and we therefore address only that issue. As to detention, the Solicitor General has represented that the Department’s Guidelines do not affect continued detention of noncitizens already in federal custody. See Brief for Petitioners 24; Tr. of Oral Arg. 40 (Solicitor General: “the Guidelines govern only decisions about apprehension and removal, whether to charge a non-citizen in the first place. … the Guidelines don’t have anything to do with continued detention”); Guidelines Memorandum, App. 111 (“This memorandum provides guidance for the apprehension and removal of noncitizens”); id., at 113 (“We will prioritize for apprehension and removal noncitizens who are a threat to our national security, public safety, and border security”).
