On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it was taking up the "Remain in Mexico" case, after the Biden administration has appealed. The policy from the Trump administration requires those seeking asylum who come to the United States via the southern border to wait in Mexico for a hearing in the U.S. immigration court.
Background: Under the policy, people seeking asylum at the southern border are required to stay in Mexico while awaiting a hearing in U.S. immigration court. Last August, in a shadow-docket order, SCOTUS rejected Biden's initial attempt to end the policy.https://t.co/IXZcMBsErG
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) February 18, 2022
Upon taking office in January 2021, President Joe Biden quickly got to work getting rid of the policy, but a ruling last August from U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk in Texas upheld the policy.
The Biden administration's version of the policy was implemented last December, as Julio highlighted from on the ground in Yuma, Arizona.
The U.S. Supreme Court had also previously upheld "Remain in Mexico," last August after Judge Kacsmaryk's decision, but such an emergency docket decision was unsigned. This use of the shadow docket tactic has been particularly reviled by liberals.
While SCOTUSblog and liberal news outlets such as CNN bemoan the policy as "controversial," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, both Republicans, were quick to celebrate.
BREAKING: The US Supreme Court just set oral arg for Texas’s Remain-in-Mexico program lawsuit. Because of my suit, Biden was ordered to reimplement this very effective program. We won at the district court. We won again at the court of appeals. And we’ll win again before SCOTUS!
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) February 18, 2022
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??BREAKING: The US Supreme Court just set oral argument for Missouri & Texas’ Remain-in-Mexico program lawsuit. Because of our suit, Biden was ordered to reimplement this effective Trump era program although they’ve dragged their feet. We won before & we’ll win again at #SCOTUS.
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) February 18, 2022
The Court will hear the case in April. Curt Levey, a constitutional law attorney and the president of the Committee for Justice took particular notice of the timing. "The Court clearly thought an expedited decision was warranted here because they squeezed a hearing into this term. The other way to expedite it would have been skipping oral argument and deciding the case on the shadow docket. Many on the left are disturbed by the Court's recent use of the shadow docket, but in most cases, it doesn't affect the substance of the ultimate outcome," Levey said.
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