This decision is a victory for the administration of Joe Biden, who wanted to cancel the decree of Donald Trump as soon as he took office.
The US Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of Joe Biden, who had overturned a contested immigration decree by ex-President Donald Trump to send asylum seekers arrested at the border back to Mexico while their case is being examined.
By a very small majority (5 to 4), the judges ruled that stopping the automatic removal of migrants to Mexico did not violate US immigration law. The measure, dubbed “Remain in Mexico”, was implemented in 2019 when the United States recorded an influx of refugees at the border with Mexico.
It had been widely criticized by civil rights associations, when President Trump had made the fight against illegal immigration one of the markers of his policy. The end of this measure was announced in February 2021, just a few weeks after Joe Biden took office, then implemented in June.
Tens of thousands of migrants each year
But two states, Texas and Missouri, had challenged the decision in court, which ruled in their favor, finding that ending the provision was against immigration law, requiring law enforcement to release arrested migrants due to lack of space in detention centres. The decision was upheld by an appeals court.
The government then reviewed its copy, at the end of October 2021, taking into account the judicial decisions, then seized the High Court. The latter therefore considered Thursday that the decree of the Minister of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas issued in October did not violate immigration law and replaced the precedent which had been attacked by the two States.
Every year, tens of thousands of Central and Latin American migrants seek to reach the United States, fleeing violence and poverty in their countries, and several hundred lose their lives there. On Monday, an overheated and overloaded truck was found in San Antonio, Texas: among its passengers, 53 people died, one of the worst immigration dramas in the United States.
