Biden Destructive Border Policies Continue With Impunity

 

Supreme Court allows Biden to end Trump-era 'Remain in Mexico' policy

By Pete Williams NBCNews.com

 

The policy required people seeking asylum at the southern border to wait in Mexico while their claims were decided.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court handed President Joe Biden a victory Thursday, ruling that he can shut down a Trump administration program designed to restrict immigration at the southern border.

The court said in a 5-4 ruling that the Biden administration acted properly in seeking to end the "Remain in Mexico" policy, formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols. It required people seeking asylum at the southern border, mainly from Central America, to wait in Mexico while their claims were decided.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said a lower court overreached when it found the policy had to remain in place.

Under "the court of appeals’ interpretation," he wrote, a judge could "force the executive to the bargaining table with Mexico, over a policy that both countries wish to terminate, and to supervise its continuing negotiations with Mexico to ensure that they are conducted 'in good faith.'”

Roberts was joined by Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer.

In a sharply worded dissent, Justice Samuel Alito criticized border policy and said it was his colleagues who erred.

"Due to the huge numbers of aliens who attempt to enter illegally from Mexico, DHS does not have the capacity to detain all inadmissible aliens encountered at the border, and no one suggests that DHS must do the impossible. But rather than avail itself of Congress’s clear statutory alternative to return inadmissible aliens to Mexico while they await proceedings in this country, DHS has concluded that it may forgo that option altogether and instead simply release into this country untold numbers of aliens who are very likely to be removed if they show up for their removal hearings. This practice violates the clear terms of the law, but the Court looks the other way," Alito wrote in a dissent that was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. 

In a separate dissent, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said she thought the court shouldn't have decided the case on the merits because more information was needed.

Kavanaugh, in an opinion concurring with Roberts, noted the number of people sent back while the Trump administration was using the policy was "relatively small." "In general, when there is insufficient detention capacity, both the parole option and the return-to-Mexico option are legally permissible options under the immigration statutes. As the recent history illustrates, every President since the late 1990s has employed the parole option, and President Trump also employed the return-to-Mexico option for a relatively small group of noncitizens," Kavanaugh wrote.