The Supreme Court decision will uphold in the meanwhile a controversial Trump-era rule that permits the US to deport migrants on the Mexican border as a public health measure in response to the pandemic.
The court voted 5-4 on Tuesday to fulfill the urgent request of 19 Republican Attorneys General who desired to intervene in defense of the policy. She also agreed to listen to oral arguments in February and determine whether states can intervene, with a choice to be made by the tip of June. The policy will remain in place a minimum of until this ruling is made.
“Title 42 is a public health measure, not an immigration law enforcement measure, and mustn’t be prolonged indefinitely,” the White House said in an announcement. “To actually fix our broken immigration system, we’d like Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform measures like those proposed by President Biden on his first day in office.”
Conservative Judge Neil Gorsuch joined three Liberals in court in voting against the suspension request. The transient court order stated that while the administration cannot overrule a Title 42 policy, the choice “doesn’t prevent the federal government from taking any motion with respect to that policy.”
As of 2020, greater than 2 million people have been deported from the southern border under this policy.
In November, a federal district court in Washington ordered the Department of Homeland Security to finish the December 21 policy, criticizing the deportations as arbitrary. However the Republican-led states intervened within the matter and successfully asked the supreme court to dam the lower court’s ruling. Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked the Biden administration earlier this month from ending the controversial policy.
The deportation policy was initiated by the Trump administration. In March 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used a provision of the Public Health Service Act or Title 42 to bar migrants from Mexico or Canada from entering the US as a result of the danger of them spreading Covid-19. The deportation policy is usually referred to easily as Title 42.
But human rights groups and dozens of health experts have sharply criticized the policy because the federal government’s way of carrying out arbitrary mass deportations on the southern border under the guise of public health.
The White House continued this policy until April 2022, when the CDC said it was not mandatory to forestall the spread of Covid. The CDC and DHS planned to finish the policy in May, but Republican states sued and obtained a federal court in Louisiana to forestall the Biden administration from ending deportations at the moment as well.
Republicans and some Democrats argue that ending the policy will result in a major increase in migration on the southern border, which the communities there are unable to address. El Paso, Texas, declared a state of emergency on Saturday in response to a recent spike in migrants crossing the border.