Biden can end Trump-era asylum policy, justices decide
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Thursday the Biden administration can scrap a Trump-era immigration policy that was at the center of efforts to deter asylum-seekers, forcing some to wait in Mexico. Two conservative justices joined their three liberal colleagues in siding with the White House.
The justices’ decision came in a case involving former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, formally know as Migrant Protection Protocols, which enrolled about 70,000 people after it was launched in 2019.
President Joe Biden suspended the program 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. The current administration has sent far fewer people back to Mexico than did the Trump administration.
The heart of the legal fight was about whether U.S. immigration authorities, with far less detention capacity than needed, had to send people to Mexico or whether those authorities had the discretion under federal law to release asylum-seekers into the United States while they awaited their hearings.
After Biden’s suspension of the program, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ended it in June 2021. In October, the department produced additional justifications for the policy’s demise, but that was to no avail in the courts.
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.
U.S. authorities stopped migrants 1.2 million times on the Mexico border from December through May, illustrating the limited impact “Remain in Mexico” has had under Biden.
Democratic-led states and progressive groups were on the administration’s side in the case. Republican-run states and conservative groups sided with Texas and Missouri.