The Biden administration is seeking the US supreme court’s go-ahead to end a controversial Trump-era immigration program that forces many seeking asylum in the US to wait in Mexico for their hearings.
The justices are hearing arguments on Tuesday in the administration’s appeal of lower-court rulings that required immigration officials to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy that the administration “has twice determined is not in the interests of the United States,” according to court filings.
Texas and Missouri, which sued to keep the program in place, said it has helped reduce the flow of people into the US at the southern border.
About 70,000 people were enrolled in the program, formally known as migrant protection protocols, after Donald Trump launched it in 2019 as president and made it a centerpiece of efforts to deter asylum seekers.
Joe Biden suspended it on his first day in office in 2021 and department of homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ended it in June 2021.
In October, DHS produced additional justifications for the policy’s demise, to no avail in the courts.
The program resumed in December, but barely 3,000 migrants had enrolled by the end of March, during a period when authorities stopped migrants about 700,000 times at the border.
The heart of the legal fight is whether the program is discretionary and can be ended, as the administration argues, or is essentially the only way to comply with what the states say is a congressional command not to release the immigrants at issue in the case into the United States.
Without adequate detention facilities in the US, Texas and Missouri argue that the administration’s only option is to make the immigrants wait in Mexico until their asylum hearings.
The two sides separately disagree about whether the way the administration went about ending the policy complies with a federal law that compels agencies to follow rules and spell out reasons for their actions.
Those being forced to wait in Mexico widely say they are terrified in dangerous Mexican border cities and find it very hard to find lawyers to handle their asylum hearings.
Democratic-led states and progressive groups are on the administration’s side. Republican-led states and conservative groups have sided with Texas and Missouri.
Meanwhile, a federal judge in Louisiana said on Monday that he intends to rule that US authorities cannot immediately proceed with plans to lift pandemic restrictions that empowered US agents at the Mexico border to turn back migrants without giving them a chance to seek asylum, a rule known as Title 42.
US district judge Robert Summerhays stated his intention after a hearing in a case brought by 21 states against the Biden administration.
The judge said both sides would confer regarding the specific terms of a temporary restraining order and would attempt to reach agreement.
The ruling would upend a decision by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to terminate the Title 42 border order by May 23.
Biden has struggled to implement what he pledged while campaigning would be a more humane and orderly system at the US-Mexico border amid record numbers of migrants arrested while crossing without papers.
The judge’s statement is a victory for Republicans who have been escalating warnings for weeks about the ending of Title 42 leading to a crisis at the border and increased illegal immigration, slamming what, for example, Louisiana attorney general Jeff Landry called “this enormous threat to our national security.”
The Department of Justice declined to comment.
The CDC said in early April that Title 42 was no longer needed to fight Covid due to the increased availability of vaccines, therapeutics and other tools to counter the disease.
In the Louisiana lawsuit, a coalition of 21 states led by Arizona, Louisiana and Missouri, all with Republican attorneys general, are seeking to stop the termination of the order put in place under Donald Trump.
Separately, Texas filed a different lawsuit on April 22 that also seeks to halt the title 42 termination and the outcome of that is awaited.
Advocates are also concerned that those waiting for months across the border end up repeatedly crossing unlawfully and being arrested multiple times, artificially inflating statistics about migrant numbers.
