This is the latest setback for President Joe Biden in his efforts to change his predecessor’s immigration policies.
The US Supreme Court has determined that the federal government cannot change a regulation that was initially implemented by former President Donald Trump during the COVID-19 outbreak and allowed for the removal of specific immigrants on public health grounds.
The nation’s highest court ruled on Tuesday that the contentious “Title 42” programme must continue under the Joe Biden administration, adding that a separate lawsuit brought by Republican leaders in 19 states must be settled first.
The Trump administration’s policy was scheduled to end on December 21 after a lower court ruled that expulsions under Title 42 were unconstitutional. The GOP-backed lawsuit, on the other hand, said that getting rid of the rule would put the country at risk of a “catastrophe” and allow unrestricted immigration. It asked the Supreme Court to put off making a decision for now.
The expulsions would continue in the interim, the justices said, even though they would hear more arguments on the programme over the course of the following year, with oral arguments scheduled for sometime in February.
The court’s unsigned opinion stated that Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan would have rejected the Republican officials’ plea to keep the Title 42 requirements in place. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Neil Gorsuch also disagreed with the decision. They said that the coronavirus pandemic was no longer an emergency, which is what those Title 42 directives were based on.
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The Title 42 expulsions were presented by President Trump in March 2020, in the early months of the global health crisis, and were based on legislation passed during World War II. Since then, the federal government has used the provision to prevent up to 2.5 million migrants from attempting to claim asylum by sending them back to Mexico or their countries of origin.
Since entering office, President Biden has taken steps to roll back some of President Trump’s stricter border policies, but Republican resistance has been strong.
In a later statement after the court’s decision on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden would follow the ruling and that he was “preparing to manage the border in a secure, orderly, and humane way when Title 42 is eventually lifted and will continue to expand legal pathways for immigration.”
Title 42 shouldn’t be extended indefinitely because it is meant to protect public health, not stop people from coming to the U.S.
