Posted 2 years ago
The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will hear an appeal from the Biden administration over its effort to unwind a Trump-era policy requiring asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while U.S. officials process their claims.
The case, which the justices will hear during the second week in April, brings the matter back before the high court months after a majority said the administration had not properly shut down the controversial program and required officials to reinstate it.
In response, the administration restarted the policy, renegotiating with Mexico to keep asylum applicants in that country, but it started another effort to shut the program, hoping to withstand legal scrutiny. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit shot down the administration's latest effort to halt the policy in December.
The Department of Homeland Security has "thus been forced to reinstate and continue implementing indefinitely a controversial policy that the Secretary has twice determined is not in the interests of the United States," the administration told the high court.
The Trump administration implemented the Migrant Protection Protocols in January 2019 as part of its effort to limit immigration – legal and illegal – at the U.S.-Mexican border and end what critics call "catch and release" policies. By the end of 2020, the Trump administration had enrolled 68,000 people in the program, according to court records.
The program permitted U.S. authorities to send migrants, including those from Central America, to Mexico while they waited for an immigration judge to review their case. A federal district court in Texas found that the policy acted as a deterrent, leading to a significant reduction in enforcement encounters along the nation's southern border.
Texas and Missouri sued, asserting that the Biden administration did not properly end the program. The states asserted that federal law requires that "very few" migrants arriving at the border should be allowed to remain in the USA while their cases are processed.
"On the government’s view, the vast majority of arriving aliens shall be so released," the states told the court in legal papers. "The government thus engages in a 'radical' rewriting of the law."
Topic: US News
Tags: Immigration Supreme Court