Posted on 06/30/22
| News Source: The Hill
The Supreme Court ruled for the Biden administration Thursday in a dispute over a Trump-era immigration policy that requires U.S. asylum seekers at the southern border to wait in Mexico while their applications are processed.
The 5-4 ruling found that the administration did not violate federal immigration law when it sought to rescind the policy. The justices returned the case to lower courts for additional proceedings.
Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, enacted in 2019, has remained in effect under President Biden despite his Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) effort to end it. Lower courts, in response to a red state legal challenge, have blocked DHS’s two attempts to unwind the policy.
Under Trump, more than 70,000 asylum-seekers were returned from the U.S. to Mexico. His program, formally called the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), marked an extreme departure from the previous practice of allowing those fleeing violence and persecution to cross the border and remain in the U.S. while they apply for asylum, a process that can take years to complete.
Early into Biden’s White House tenure, his administration sought to formally end the Trump-era policy. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memorandum in June 2021 ordering an end to the program, which prompted the legal challenge by the attorneys general of Texas and Missouri.