The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the Biden administration properly ended a Trump-era policy forcing some U.S. asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico.
The justices' 5-4 decision for the administration came in a case about the “Remain in Mexico” policy under President Donald Trump. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the decision and was joined by fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh as well as the court's three liberal justices — Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
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 immigration authorities, with far less detention capacity than needed, had to send people to Mexico or whether they had the discretion under federal law to release asylum-seekers into the United States while they awaited their hearings.
About 70,000 people were enrolled in the program, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols, after President Donald Trump launched it in 2019 and made it a centerpiece of efforts to deter asylum-seekers.
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, to no avail in the courts.
The program resumed in December, but barely 3,000 migrants had enrolled by the end of March, during a period when authorities stopped migrants about 700,000 times at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Democratic-led states and progressive groups were on the administration’s side. Republican-run states and conservative groups sided with Texas and Missouri.
The case is Biden v. Texas, 21-954.
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U.S. Representative Mark Amodei (NV-02) issued the following statement after the U.S. Supreme Court announced its ruling in the Title 42 case Biden v. Texas:
“I’m disappointed that the U.S. Supreme Court today ruled to uphold President Biden’s decision to end Title 42, the Trump-era order better known as the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy designed to help secure the border and keep Americans safe. Since the start of this failed Administration, over 2.9 million illegal immigrants have been apprehended at the southern border, and those numbers continue to rise, setting new records month after month. This is not only a national security crisis, but also a humanitarian crisis that will grow worse and worse following this ruling. Just this week, 53 migrants were found dead in a tractor trailer near the border in Texas because of a tragic and failed human smuggling attempt, and so far this fiscal year, over 7,700 pounds of fentanyl, enough to kill millions of Americans, has been seized by Customs and Border Protection. This is not the time for weak immigration policies that encourage illegal crossings.
“As such, today in the Appropriations Committee markup on the Fiscal Year 2023 Labor, Health and Human Services bill, I was glad to vote for an amendment that would effectively delay the Biden Administration from ending Title 42. Unfortunately, House Democrats rejected the amendment. Further, I’ve called for an investigation into the release of migrants in the U.S. along with my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee, and I will continue to support strong border policies. I urge this Administration and this majority party in Congress to secure our border, protect existing laws that keep American citizens healthy and safe, and enact legislation that will address the surge of drug smugglers and human traffickers at the border. But given the Supreme Court’s ruling on Title 42, unfortunately, we can expect that the partisan political agendas of this Administration will only be incentivized.”
