WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court gave the green light Thursday for the Biden administration to scrap a Trump-era immigration policy that required asylum-seeking migrants to remain in Mexico while their cases are reviewed, ending a year-long legal fight over a practice that critics say contributed to a humanitarian crisis at the border.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority decision, which was 5-4. He was joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the court’s liberal bloc. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, and Amy Coney Barrett dissented.
In the final opinion issued for 2021-2022, Roberts said the lower court’s ruling against the administration “imposed a significant burden on the executive’s ability to conduct diplomatic relations with Mexico.” That’s because, according to Roberts, the United States cannot unilaterally return migrants from Central America to Mexico. Those returns must be negotiated with Mexican officials.
The decision represented a rare victory for President Joe Biden before the conservative Supreme Court and allowed the administration to undo a policy imposed by President Donald Trump.
In the dissenting opinion, Alito blamed the administration for releasing “untold numbers of aliens into this country who will most likely be removed if they show up for their removal hearings.”
“This practice violates the plain terms of the law,” Alito said, “but the court turns a blind eye.”
special series:More and more migrants seek asylum in the US; many run into a high bureaucratic wall
The Trump administration implemented the “remain in Mexico” policy, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, in January 2019 as part of its effort to curb immigration. It requires migrants from Central America and other nations seeking asylum to wait in Mexico for their applications to be reviewed. By the end of 2020, the federal government had enrolled 68,000 people in the program, according to court records.
Fulfilling a campaign promise, Biden terminated the program last year. Texas and Missouri sued, saying the Department of Homeland Security did not follow the law when it killed the program because it did not explain its reasons for doing so. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed with the states in December.
Federal law requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to detain immigrants while their asylum claims are reviewed, but Congress has not provided enough money to fulfill that mandate. Of the 220,000 encounters border agents had with immigrants at the southwest border in March, DHS only had funds for 32,000 detention beds, federal officials told the court.
The Biden administration never disputed that it is required by law to detain those immigrants. The question was what to do with those people when Congress has not provided the money to carry out the requirement. Texas and Missouri said the law required most of those people to be returned to Mexico. Biden officials countered that the law has no such requirement, noting that no administration before Trump — Republican or Democrat — interpreted it that way.
Instead, the Biden administration ended up paroleing thousands of migrants into the United States while they await their hearings. The current administration said the deal allows officials to prioritize people who are most likely to commit crimes or flee for arrest.
Title 42:Asylum seekers prepare to wait indefinitely at the border
The program is related to but different from the one known as Title 42, implemented in 2020, which expedites the removal of asylum seekers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden has tried to stop that program, but the effort has been put on hold by a federal court. Neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security immediately responded to a request for comment on the decision.
The lawsuits are being resolved at a time when the country is experiencing a sharp increase in migrants at the southern border. US Customs and Border Protection apprehended 234,088 people at the border in April, the highest monthly total in 22 years.
Translation Teresa Frontado
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism