The decision was 5-4 and states that the immigration law gives the federal government the discretion to terminate the program, officially known as the Immigrant Protection Protocols. The case will be returned to the lower courts for further proceedings in connection with his latest attempt to terminate the program. The suspension of Biden’s attempt to end the program remains in force, but Thursday’s decision suggested that the order should be lifted soon.
Writing for the majority, Supreme Court Justice John Roberts said the relevant immigration statute “provides clear discretion to repatriate aliens to Mexico during pending immigration proceedings.”
“The use of the word ‘can’ in the legal question,” Roberts wrote, “makes it clear that the return of contiguous territories is a tool that the DHS secretary ‘has the power, but not the duty’ to use.”
The Supreme Court ruling is a major victory for Biden’s immigration agenda, as the government has suffered several losses in lower courts in its efforts to overturn Trump’s hardline immigration policies. Several of the red states that have challenged the termination of the Immigration Protocols have also filed lawsuits challenging Biden’s other attempts to distance himself from his predecessor’s aggressive approach, and these cases are still pending in lower courts.
Liberal judges and Judge Brett Cavanaugh joined Roberts, and Cavanaugh also gave his assent. Judges Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett wrote opposing views, along with the other dissidents.
In its ruling, the court said lower courts must now consider whether the government complied with administrative law in the most recent attempt by the Biden government – in a memo released in October – to end the politics of the time. Trump.
Biden’s attempt to end the program had been challenged in court by a Texas-led coalition of red states who argued that its termination was contrary to immigration law. They also argued that the administration had violated the Administrative Procedure Act – which requires services to take certain procedural steps in implementing the policy – on how it proceeded with the abolition of the Immigrant Protection Protocols.
The lower courts, which refused to consider the October memorandum, will now consider whether this latest attempt to end the program was in line with the Administrative Procedure Act.
Roberts wrote that the government’s power to release certain immigrants on parole, instead of holding them back or sending them back to Mexico, is not “unlimited”, and noted the requirement of the immigration law to be used “on a case-by-case basis”.
“And according to the APA, the exercise of discretion (of the Department of Homeland Security) within this institutional framework must be reasonable and reasonably explained,” Roberts said.
He also said the lower court had erred in preventing Biden from ending the program, citing a court ruling earlier on Thursday stating that lower courts could not issue orders banning immigration officials from enforcing certain policies. .
This suggests that lower courts, in the next round of “Stay in Mexico” disputes, will not have the power to block Biden’s attempt to end the program, but it was not immediately clear whether the government could end politics immediately.
Holding judges in the lower court may also hamper future efforts to challenge the immigration policies of Democratic and Republican administrations in court – meaning immigrant rights activists may have secured a short-term victory with the ruling. on Thursday, while they have suffered a long-term setback.
“While we are excited that today’s decision will end the cruel and inhumane Remain in Mexico program, depriving federal courts of their ability to issue immigration and detention orders that have not been submitted by individual immigrants, it will have serious consequences. migrants’ rights in the future “. Aaron Reichlin-Melnik, policy director of the U.S. Immigration Council, said in a statement. “Restricting access to justice in challenging immigration cases sets a dangerous precedent by giving services uncontrollable power to arrest, detain and deport.”
The program, first implemented in 2019 under then-President Donald Trump, has been criticized by immigrant rights advocates, who say it is inhumane and exposes asylum seekers to credible allegations of dangerous and miserable conditions in Mexico.
Before the Trump administration implemented the “Stay in Mexico” program, no other government had taken such an approach to non-Mexican asylum seekers that required them to remain in Mexico during their immigration proceedings in the United States. Biden campaigned for an end to politics, saying he “opposes everything we support as a nation of immigrants.”
Biden has faced a growing number of border crossings during his rule amid mass immigration to the Western Hemisphere. Since October, border authorities have encountered migrants more than a million times along the U.S.-Mexico border, although many have been prevented under a separate pandemic emergency rule. The Department of Homeland Security, however, argued that the “Stay in Mexico” policy has high human costs and is not an efficient use of resources.
Defenders of immigrants’ rights celebrated Thursday’s decision. Taylor Levy, an immigration lawyer who has worked in hundreds of MPP cases, said in a statement that the decision was “a victory for the tens of thousands of people trapped by Remain in Mexico and subjected to unimaginable cruelty.”
Judy Rabinovitz, Special Adviser to ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement that “once the case is returned to the lower court, the Biden government” can and must move quickly to end its stay in Mexico once and for all. ” – a result that was delayed a lot and unjustly “.
According to Biden’s Department of Justice, the immigration law had never before been interpreted as requiring the government to send migrants back to Mexico with pending immigration procedures that they were unable to detain.
“Every presidential administration has understood that this is just a purely discreet principle. This applies to the previous administration,” Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar said in an oral hearing in April.
He also argued that keeping “Remain in Mexico” in place would not solve the real problem: that Congress instructed immigration officials to “detain” asylum seekers whose proceedings were pending, but that lawmakers did not have sufficient resources to these detention facilities.
“The return of contiguous territories may not be the solution here,” Prelogar said, noting that when the Trump administration implemented the policy, only 6.5% of the immigrants who met at the border were enrolled in the program.
“It has inherent limitations,” Prelogar said, pointing to the market that the program requires from Mexico, a sovereign nation.
In his concurrence, Cavanaugh denounced the “long-standing inability of political parties to provide DHS with sufficient facilities to hold non-citizens seeking to enter the United States pending immigration proceedings.”
In a dispute between Judges Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, Alito wrote that the government was seeking to “release into this country untold numbers of aliens who are likely to be expelled if they appear at their removal hearings”.
“This practice violates the clear terms of the law, but the Court looks the other way,” he wrote.
Judge Amy Coney Barrett, along with the other three dissenters, wrote a dissenting opinion saying she did not believe the lower courts had the power to resolve the underlying legal issues in the case.
Biden first tried to suspend the program on the day he took office in 2021, resulting in a lawsuit filed by the Red States. That June, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mallorca issued a note officially ending the policy – but a Texas federal judge blocked the move in August. The Supreme Court a few days later refused to put this decision on hold while the appeal was pending, effectively requiring Biden to revive “Remain in Mexico.”
In October, Mayorkas issued a new note ordering the termination of the program, which sought to address the procedural flaws mentioned in the August District Court ruling. A point of contention in the lower court process was whether this October note made the previous rulings under discussion, with the 5th US Regional Court of Appeals ruling that it did not.
The policy resumed last December. More than 5,000 migrants have returned to Mexico under the program since then, according to the International Organization for Migration. Nicaragua, Cuba, Colombia and Venezuela are among the nationalities enrolled in the program.
The most sweeping issue in the case was the level of discretion left to the executive by these immigration laws, which have been amended several times over the past century and beyond. A provision of the law states that asylum seekers whose applications are still being processed “will be detained” pending these proceedings.
Another provision, passed in 1996, said that the federal government “may return” migrants who are still awaiting processing in the contiguous area from which they entered. Another provision states that, on a case-by-case basis, immigration officials may release on parole migrants whose proceedings are pending.
Opponents of the Biden government in the case had argued that the government was releasing immigrants conditionally in a …
