The Biden administration is tapping a left-wing attorney who has publicly endorsed sanctuary laws for illegal aliens to serve as Immigration and Customs Enforcement's top prosecutor, according to an internal memo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
ICE announced the hiring of Kerry Doyle, a longtime partner at the Boston-based law firm Graves & Doyle, as the agency's new principal legal adviser, a role that oversees 25 field locations and 1,250 attorneys. The office serves as ICE’s representative in all removal proceedings and litigates cases against illegal aliens and terrorists.
"Throughout her legal practice in Boston, Ms. Doyle worked closely with the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition and Massachusetts Law Reform Institute providing technical assistance and public testimony and various immigration-related policy issues before the state legislature and Boston City Council," the ICE memo reads.
A spokesman for ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Doyle's appointment comes as the Biden administration faces an influx of Haitian refugees, who are overrunning the border city of Del Rio, Texas. After reversing a bevy of Trump-era immigration rules, an uptick in illegal migration across the Southern border has strained resources and presented a political problem for the president, who repudiated Trump's hardline approach to policing the border but risks political blowback from an influx of illegal residents.
Doyle's LinkedIn profile spotlights her work as co-counsel in a case that pushed for -- and won -- a temporary restraining order against then-president Donald Trump’s 2017 travel ban. The attorney also spoke in favor of a Massachusetts bill called the "Safe Communities Act" in early 2020 arguing that ICE was "out of control." . The measure would have applied sanctuary city laws nationwide and sharply limited the state’s cooperation with the federal government on the deportation of illegal immigrants.
"The Safe Communities Act limits state cooperation … [with ICE]: don’t ask about immigration status; don’t pay for sheriffs to act as ICE agents; tell people their rights," a description of the bill by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts reads. In June, Doyle told a local news outlet that the state must pass the bill, saying state Democrats should not trust "the Biden administration’s more supportive tone as an excuse not to do what our state needs to do."
Doyle, who did not respond to a request for comment, has also helped represent illegal aliens convicted of crimes in the past. In March, she filed a petition with ACLU Massachusetts to release two criminal aliens with medical conditions, citing the COVID-19 pandemic. Doyle’s name has since been scrubbed from her previous law firm’s website.
One of President Joe Biden’s first executive orders in office was to suspend arrests, deportations, and investigations of most criminal aliens for 100 days. Deportations under Biden have hit a record low. U.S. immigration judges ordered just 25,000 deportations by the end of August, compared to 152,000 in August 2020. The total number of cases completed by immigration courts are at a 28-year low, even as Border Patrol apprehensions hit a 21-year high.
Doyle will succeed John Trasviña, who assumed the role in January.