Roberts, Kavanaugh join liberals on Trump-era asylum policy
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Thursday the Biden administration can scrap a Trump-era immigration policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration courts, a victory for a White House that still must address the growing number of people seeking refuge at America’s southern border.
The ruling will have little immediate impact because the policy has been seldom applied under President Joe Biden, who reinstated it under a court order in December. It was his predecessor, Donald Trump, who launched the “Remain in Mexico” policy and fully embraced it.
Under Trump, the program enrolled about 70,000 people after it was launched in 2019. Biden suspended the policy, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols, on his first day in office in January 2021. But lower courts ordered it reinstated in response to a lawsuit from Republican-led Texas and Missouri.
Two conservative justices joined their three liberal colleagues in siding with the White House. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that an appeals court “erred in holding that the” federal Immigration and Nationality Act “required the Government to continue implementing MPP.” Joining the majority opinion was fellow conservative Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, as well as liberal justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Another Trump-era policy that remains in effect and was not a part of Thursday’s ruling allows the government to quickly expel migrants without a chance to ask for asylum, casting aside U.S. law and an international treaty on grounds of containing the spread of COVID-19. There have been more than 2 million expulsions since the pandemicera rule, known as Title 42 authority, was introduced in March 2020.
In May, a federal judge in Louisiana prevented the Biden administration from halting Title 42, in a case that may ultimately reach the Supreme Court.
In other court news:
♦ Justices on Thursday agreed to hear a case that could dramatically change the way elections for Congress and the presidency are conducted by handing more power to state legislatures and blocking state courts from reviewing challenges to the procedures and results.
♦ The Supreme Court said Thursday that gun cases involving restrictions in Hawaii, California, New Jersey and Maryland deserve a new look following its 6-3 decision last week that struck down a New York law that required people to show “proper cause,” a specific need to carry a gun, if they wanted to carry a gun in public.