‘Remain in Mexico’ policy back in play
WASHINGTON >> The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the Trump administration to maintain a program that has forced about 60,000 asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while their requests are heard. An appeals court had blocked the program, saying it was at odds with both federal law and international treaties and was causing “extreme and irreversible harm.”
The Supreme Court’s order was brief and unsigned, and it gave no reasons for staying the appeals court’s ruling while the case moved forward. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that she would have denied the administration’s request for a stay.
The ruling, from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, applied to the two border states within its jurisdiction, California and Arizona, and was to take effect Thursday.
Judy Rabinovitz, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents people and groups challenging the program, expressed dismay at the Supreme Court’s temporary action but said she hoped the justices would strike the program down in the end.
“The court of appeals unequivocally declared this policy to be illegal,” Rabinovitz said in a statement. “The Supreme Court should as well. Asylum-seekers face grave danger and irreversible harm every day this depraved policy remains in effect.”
The Justice Department said the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the administration to maintain the program, known formally as Migrant Protection Protocols, was a welcome development.
“We are gratified that the Supreme Court granted a stay, which prevents a district court injunction from impairing the security of our borders and the integrity of our immigration system,” a spokeswoman said in a statement. “The Migrant Protection Protocols, implemented pursuant to express authority granted by Congress decades ago, have been critical to restoring the government’s ability to manage the southwest border and to work cooperatively with the Mexican government to address illegal immigration.”
In urging the Supreme Court to take prompt action, Solicitor General Noel Francisco said the appeals court’s ruling had already caused chaos at the border.
Without a stay from the Supreme Court, he wrote, the appeals court’s ruling was “virtually guaranteed to impose irreparable harm by prompting a rush on the border and potentially requiring the government to allow into the United States and detain thousands of aliens who lack any entitlement to enter this country, or else to release them into the interior where many will simply disappear.”
The challenged policy applies to people who leave a third country and travel through Mexico to reach the U.S. border.
Since the policy was put in place at the beginning of last year, tens of thousands of people have waited for immigration hearings in unsanitary tent encampments exposed to the elements. There have been widespread reports of sexual assault, kidnap and torture.
The program “has put asylum-seekers directly in harm’s way,” lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups told the Supreme Court in a brief urging it not to intervene. “Asylum-seekers returned to Mexico are sent to some of the most violent areas in the world.”
“Indeed,” the brief said, “the U.S. State Department itself has recognized the ‘victimization of migrants’ in Mexico ‘by criminal groups and in some cases by police, immigration officers and customs officials,’ including kidnappings, extortion and sexual violence.”