WASHINGTON (TND) — The Biden administration properly ended a Trump-era policy that forced some U.S. asylum seekers to wait in Mexico, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The justices’ 5-4 decision for the administration came in a case, Biden v. Texas, 21-954, about former President Donald Trump’s controversial “Remain in Mexico” policy.
An independent news agency said on Twitter that “red states” argued President Joe Biden was legally required to keep the policy but a majority on the nation’s highest court disagreed.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored the decision, was joined by fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh as well as the court’s three liberal justices — Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
At the heart of the legal fight was whether immigration officials, with far fewer resources than necessary to house asylum-seekers, had the right under federal law to release migrants into the United States while they awaited hearings.
Trump launched the program, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols, in 2019 and made it a focal point to deter asylum-seekers.
Biden suspended the program on his first day in office in Jan. 2021. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas officially ended it in June of last year. However, lower courts ordered it be reinstated after Republican-led states, Texas and Missouri, filed lawsuits. The program resumed in December, but barely 3,000 migrants had enrolled by the end of March. When Trump was president, there were roughly 70,000 people enrolled in the program.
The low numbers came at a time when border authorities were stopping 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 Associated Press reported.
