Supreme Court enables Biden to end ‘stay in Mexico’

(CNN) – The United States’ Supreme Court gave President Joe Biden the green light on Thursday to end the controversial “Stay in Mexico” or “Stay in Mexico” immigration policy that originated under the Trump administration.

The case now returns to the lower court for additional actions related to Biden’s latest attempt to end the program. Commentary on Biden’s attempt to terminate the program remains in effect, but Thursday’s ruling indicates the order should be lifted soon.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that immigration law gives the federal government the discretion to terminate the program, which sends some non-Mexican citizens who have entered the United States to Mexico — rather than detain or detain them. They were released in the US – while their immigration procedures were developing.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing to the majority, said “Congress granted the authority to return to the contiguous territories on express discretionary terms.”

Roberts was joined by liberal judges and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who also provided a concurring opinion. Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Connie Barrett wrote dissenting opinions, which were joined by other dissidents.

In its ruling, the court said lower courts must now consider whether the government complied with administrative law with the Biden administration’s latest attempt — with a memo filed in October — to end politics under Trump.

Since the beginning of his administration, Biden has sought to end this policy, which returns some non-Mexican citizens who have entered the United States to Mexico — rather than either being detained or released in the United States — while their immigration procedures unfold.

Biden’s proposal to end the program has been challenged in court by a Texas-led coalition of red states, which has argued that ending the program would contravene immigration law. They also argued that the administration violated the Administrative Procedures Act — which requires agencies to take certain procedural steps when implementing policy — in the way it rescinded the program, known formally as the Immigrant Protection Protocols.

The programme, first implemented in 2019 under President Donald Trump, has come under fire from immigrant rights advocates, who argue it is inhumane and exposes asylum seekers with credible claims to dangerous conditions.

Before the Trump administration launched the “Stay in Mexico” program, no other administration took such an approach to non-Mexican asylum seekers that it required them to remain in Mexico during their immigration court proceedings. Immigration in the United States. Biden campaigned to end the policy, saying it “goes against everything we stand for as a nation of immigrants.”

Biden has faced an increasing number of border crossings over the course of his administration amid a mass exodus in the Western Hemisphere. Since October, border authorities have encountered migrants more than a million times along the US-Mexico border, although many have been rejected under a separate emergency epidemiological law. However, the Department of Homeland Security emphasized that the “stay in Mexico” policy has a high human cost and is not an efficient use of resources.

According to Biden’s Justice Department, relevant immigration law has not previously been interpreted as requiring the government to return immigrants to Mexico who are awaiting immigration procedures that it cannot keep in custody.

“All presidential administrations have recognized that this is purely discretionary. And that is true of the previous administration,” Attorney General Elizabeth Prilugar said in oral arguments in April.
He also argued that keeping “remain in Mexico” in place would not solve the underlying problem: Congress had instructed that immigration officials “must” “detain asylum seekers whose proceedings are still pending, but lawmakers have not allocated sufficient resources to these detention centers.”

“Returning adjacent lands can’t be the solution here,” Prilugar said, noting that when the Trump administration was implementing the policy, only 6.5% of immigrants found at the border were enrolled in the program.

“It has inherent limitations,” Prilujar said, referring to the commitment the program requires from Mexico, a sovereign nation.

Biden first attempted to suspend the program on the day he took office in 2021, which led to lawsuits from the red states. In June, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mallorcas, issued a memorandum officially ending the policy, but a federal judge in Texas blocked the move in August.

Days later, the Supreme Court refused to delay that ruling until the appeal was resolved, forcing Biden to reactivate “Stay in Mexico.”

In October, Mallorcas issued a new memo ordering a halt to the program, in an effort to correct procedural flaws revealed in the August District Court ruling. One point of contention in the lower court proceedings was whether that October memo made the earlier rulings moot, and the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that it did not.

Politics resumed last December. Since then, more than 5,000 migrants have been returned to Mexico under the program, according to the International Organization for Migration. Nicaragua, Cuba, Colombia and Venezuela are among the nationalities registered in the programme.

The most important issue in the case was the level of discretion that the respective immigration laws left to the executive branch, which has been amended several times over the past century. A provision of the law states that asylum seekers whose applications are still pending “must” be detained while these procedures are in progress.

Another provision, adopted in 1996, states that the federal government may “return” immigrants still awaiting their procedure to the vicinity through which they entered. Another provision states that, on a “case-by-case basis,” immigration officials can conditionally release immigrants whose proceedings are still pending.

Beginning of “Stay in Mexico”

‘Stay in Mexico’ or ‘Stay in Mexico’ program officially announced Thursday 20 December 2018.

On that day, Kirstjen Nielsen, who was at the time the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announced that the United States had informed Mexico that people who had entered the country illegally or who had entered without proper documentation and sought asylum would be. They were sent to Mexico to await a decision on their immigration procedures in the United States.

Asylum seekers from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador had to wait outside the United States until their immigration procedures were completed, According to DHS.

That policy forced the immigrants to remain in Mexico until a hearing in US immigration court.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, immigrants will first be returned to Mexico, then notified to appear in court and then allowed to enter the country to attend the hearing.

A DHS official said at the time that Mexico would continue to provide humanitarian assistance to people awaiting legal proceedings near the border.