WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Thursday gave the Biden administration permission to end the Trump-era Stay in Mexico policy, which barred at least 70,000 Central American migrants from entering the United States to apply for asylum. .
Judgment 5-4 by Chief Justice Roberts ruled that “the repeal of the government of [Remain in Mexico] has not violated ”federal immigration law.
It was a defeat for Texas and Missouri, who persuaded the lower courts to block two efforts by President Joe Biden to overturn the policy pursued in January 2019. Both times, the lower courts ruled that Biden’s home security department should not follow correct procedures.
Activists with opposing views on immigration see the Biden v. Texas case as a key test of executive discretion. Those who opposed Donald Trump’s hardline approach hoped the decision would encourage Biden to lift other retained policies, including Title 42, implemented at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and used to ban 2 million migrants.
In fact, Governor Greg Abbott, lamenting the decision, warned that it would “only promote the Biden administration’s open border policy.”
The Biden administration argues that Trump’s policy itself is an exercise in discretion and therefore subject to repeal by another president.
“This policy has always been a terrible and inhumane idea,” said Bill Holston, executive director of the North Texas Human Rights Initiative, a legal nonprofit in Dallas. “This has made it virtually impossible for people who have legally sought asylum at the border to bring their claims to court. And subjected them to extreme violence while waiting in dangerous border conditions. Policies like this have made people take increasingly dangerous routes to the United States. “
“This is leading to the tragic loss of life we just saw in San Antonio when 53 migrants crammed into a tugboat died in three-digit heat on Monday,” he said.
Related: Supreme Court Considers Texas Offer to Block Biden to End Trump’s Asylum Policy
Abbott also cited the tragedy, but said detaining and enforcing Remain in Mexico “would deter thousands more migrants from embarking on this deadly path” and prevent the loss of migrants’ lives.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called the decision “unfortunate” and “wrong.” He accused Biden of “allowing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to cross the border month after month” while the case is pending. “Today’s decision exacerbates the border crisis.
But Aaron Reichlin-Melnik, political director at the American Immigration Council, praised the court for slamming the door on the “radical proposal that no administration can ever end the Stay in Mexico” program.
Disappointed with SCOTUS ‘decision to allow Biden to eliminate Stay in Mexico.
I pray that he makes the right decision and follows the policy, given our unprecedented border crisis.
South Texas is already seeing the impact of an open border.
Removing this would be disastrous.
– Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) June 30, 2022
Rosalio Sosa, a pastor who heads a network of shelters in the state of Chihuahua against El Paso, in Ciudad Juarez, Palomas and Ascension, called the decision “divine intervention on behalf of migrants.”
“Staying in Mexico was not only cruel, but also deadly,” he said, because Mexico is so dangerous for migrants that for many “it would be wiser to risk crossing the desert.”
According to the MPP, asylum seekers from countries other than Mexico who arrive at the southwestern border – at or between the ports of entry – have been returned to Mexico to await a hearing in a U.S. immigration court.
Many found themselves in dangerous and unsanitary refugee camps, including a particularly boring camp in Matamoros, which was emptied and destroyed after Biden took office and stopped enrolling in the MPP. Human Rights First tracked more than 1,500 reported abductions and attacks on migrants involved in the program. The State Department has issued its highest security warning for the state of Tamaulipas on Matamoros, south of McAllen, a major migration corridor.
Sosa estimated that more than 7,500 registered migrants were stranded in northern Mexico, adding that the normalization of the asylum process “takes a key marketing tool for smugglers who are gripped by the despair and frustration of these migrants.”
Related: Chaos at the border means big money for smugglers who use blatant tactics to lure migrants with false promises
In oral debates on April 26, judges seemed confused by mixed signals from Congress: a chronic lack of funding for a detention facility and inconsistencies in statutes, some saying federal authorities could “detain” migrants, others who said they would “detain “.
The administration says that if Congress wants to ban the release of all asylum seekers in the country pending hearings, it will have to provide accommodation for all of them – and it has never done so.
Conservative Judge Brett Cavanaugh has joined Roberts and the court’s three liberals, including Stephen Brier, whose retirement went into effect Thursday at noon.
Related: “Grateful:” Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as Supreme Court judge, replacing Breyer
In a concerted opinion, Cavanaugh noted that given the lack of space for detention, immigration laws allow parole in the United States while migrants await hearings. The approach to return to Mexico is also legal. But neither is required.
“Because immigration laws provide considerable discretion to the executive, different presidents may exercise that discretion in different ways,” he wrote.
Four conservatives expressed their disagreement. Judge Amy Connie Barrett chose to return the fight to a lower court, but agreed with the majority on the merits, providing something of an asterisk in the number of votes.
Related: Caught in Texas, Biden asks Supreme Court to allow him to overturn Trump’s asylum policy to stay in Mexico
“This is a bitterly sweet victory after so many lives have been lost to brutal immigration deterrence policies both at the federal level and in the state of Texas,” said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the El Paso Border Human Rights Network.
Representative Raul Ruiz, D-California, chairman of the Spanish group in Congress, called the decision “a step in the right direction”, but added that “we remain working to build a fairer and more humane asylum process.” We need to do more to prevent tragedies like the one we saw in San Antonio.
US law gives asylum seekers the right to file a claim on American soil. But it can take years to get a hearing.
Trump and others who want to curb illegal migration argue that countless migrants use the delays to stay in the United States indefinitely and that many have false asylum applications.
Trump’s policy, officially known as the Protocols on the Protection of Migrants, or MPP, was intended to address this.
Biden stopped recording new MPPs on the day he took office. By then, about 70,000 migrants had been expelled in two years, including at least 16,000 children who had arrived with a relative. Unaccompanied children were released from deportation.
Mexican nationals are subject to deportation or detention under other regulations.
Within five months, the Biden administration allowed 13,000 people previously registered in the United States to wait for their hearings.
Homeland Security Minister Alejandro Mallorca completely abolished Remain in Mexico on June 1, 2021.
Texas and Missouri have filed a lawsuit accusing DHS of failing to follow proper procedures.
On August 15, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kachmarik, appointed by Trump in Amarillo, ordered DHS to enforce the policy while the government had sufficient capacity to detain all migrants subject to detention. The New Orleans-based 5th District Court of Appeals upheld the order.
Mallorca issued a note on October 29 terminating the MPP for the second time, insisting it had followed every procedure to the letter.
The administration lost again and the program was resumed in court.
From 6 December to 30 April, according to the latest available data, 5,014 migrants were enrolled in the MPP. Of these, 2,914 were returned to Mexico. Most (62%) are from Nicaragua, followed by Cubans (15%) and Colombians (7%).
The Supreme Court ruling on Thursday ruled that the cancellation of DHS on October 29 was legal.
Judge Samuel Alito wrote in disagreement that internal security officers were required to keep asylum seekers out of the country pending sentencing.
“When it turns out that one of these foreigners is not eligible, can the government simply release the foreigner in that country and hope that the foreigner will appear at the hearing, at which his right to remain will be decided?” Congress has given a clear answer to this question and the answer is no, “he wrote.
Dallas, Houston and 23 other local authorities across the country supported Biden’s attempt to cancel Remain in Mexico. In a friend of the court, they called it unfair to keep migrants away from the pro bono legal aid that many cities offer, which would significantly improve their chances of obtaining asylum.
Only 2.4% of the 1,109 stays in Mexico resolved so far this year have resulted in asylum, compared to about half of the cases in the regular immigration judiciary, according to data held by researchers at the University of Syracuse.
By court order, the Biden administration reluctantly resumed the MPP in December.
Mexico won concessions in exchange for continued cooperation: vaccination against COVID-19 for all migrants subject to the policy; a commitment to close their cases within 180 days, which requires dozens more immigration judges; and better access to lawyers for migrants, especially those who fear returning to Mexico.
Mexico’s role in policy implementation has been a major focus of oral debate. Several judges have expressed deep skepticism about the Texas insistence that the Biden administration lacks flexibility in how it handles asylum seekers, given the lack of space to hold and rely on …
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