Frontline immigration officers and prosecutors routinely ignore federal prosecutorial discretion guidelines when choosing noncitizens for deportation. Observers assume that presidential administrations directly control who gets removed by issuing top-down enforcement rules. Instead, individual officers select targets on the ground according to personal discretion, bypassing written priorities sent from leadership.
Federal enforcement funding covers only a small fraction of the tens of millions of noncitizens subject to removal. Like branch staff ignoring a corporate memo, line agents process cases using their own informal preferences rather than central agency checklists. Each individual arrest and prosecution choice accumulates across field offices to produce a functioning deportation policy. This split leaves agency leaders unable to control the daily enforcement actions carried out across the country.
The study authors conducted the first longitudinal empirical analysis of prosecutorial discretion policies across every modern presidential administration. They analyzed large enforcement datasets to evaluate how well line-level deportations matched the stated priorities of successive administrations. The data revealed that frontline practice consistently diverged from written agency guidelines regardless of political party or funding levels.
The authors identified key institutional features that determine whether frontline personnel follow national enforcement instructions. Future agency leaders can use these lessons to design enforcement guidelines that align stated priorities with line-level practice.