The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 last week that the Biden administration could reverse a Trump-era initiative, the Migrant protection protocols, which forces asylum seekers – mostly from Central and South America – to stay in Mexico while their cases are heard in US courts. This raises various questions for President Joe Biden’s immigration strategy.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the Supreme Court’s decision in Biden v. Texas dealt with a legal issue, not a political one.
“The court recognized today that this was really part of a larger political problem of insufficient funding for our broken immigration system,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, who teaches immigration law at Cornell.
The idea behind the “stay in Mexico” policy was to discourage immigration. It also meant that border states would not have to process and house so many migrants. But it has forced thousands of people, including those with valid asylum claims, into dangerous conditions at the Mexican border.
Avidan Cover teaches human rights law at Case Western Reserve University. He said the Biden administration needed to replace “staying in Mexico” with something.
“Regardless of the mandate to detain individuals, if there is not sufficient funding to ensure both sufficient capacity and of course human capacity, then the executive branch must seek other options,” he said. he declared.
The Department of Homeland Security processed more than 670,000 people in fiscal year 2021 along the southern border. It had the capacity to detain approximately 34,000 people.
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