By a 6-3 vote on Tuesday, the high court ruled the Biden administration likely violated federal law when it attempted to end the Trump-era program that requires immigrants seeking asylum in the United States to wait in Mexico while their cases are heard, The Associated Press reported.
The ruling upholds a lower court decision ordering the Biden administration to make a “good faith effort” to reinstate the program which is formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols.
Biden suspended the program on his first day in office and can appeal to the court to end it permanently, the AP said.
Reacting to the ruling, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said his state will hold the Biden administration accountable. Texas was one of several states that sued in June to stop Biden's order to end the program.
"We’ll seek to take them back to court," he told Fox News. "And whatever people are responsible for not following the law, we’ll ask for contempt and those people could end up in jail."
Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, says the ruling is an “important victory” not just for U.S. immigration law but for public safety, too, because the program is used by the drug cartels and smugglers.
“This is an order on the part of the Supreme Court,” he tells American Family News, “that says, Look, the Biden administration has to follow rules the same way the Trump administration did."
Most asylum cases dismissed
FAIR and other immigrant watchdogs routinely point out that illegal immigrants, coached by cartels and smugglers, use the claim of asylum to get inside the United States while awaiting a mandatory court hearing. Once here, however, they often disappear because their claim of fearing persecution in their homeland rarely holds up in front of a federal judge.
How many are denied asylum? A 2019 “fact-check” by The Arizona Republic newspaper called former U.S. Sen. Martha McSally “misleading” because she stated at the time that 90% of asylum seekers are denied permanent entry into the U.S.
McSally was “misleading,” the fact-check said, because that otherwise accurate figure accounts for illegals who come from the “Northern Triangle” region that includes Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
Aware of the constant abuse, the Trump administration created the “Remain in Mexico” policy to curb the overwhelming number of fraud cases and to cut down on catch-and-release cases.
Mirroring the vow from Attorney General Paxton, Mehlman predicts the Biden administration will not comply with the court ruling and therefore it deserves legal oversight after the SCOTUS ruling.
"They can be held in contempt of the court," he says of the Biden administration.
