AMARILLO, Texas (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily barred the Biden administration from ending a Trump-era policy that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Texas suspended the settlement pending resolution of legal disputes in Texas and Missouri, but did not order the reinstatement of the policy. The impact on the program was not immediately clear.
“It is common sense policy to stop people from entering our country illegally,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted after the ruling. “Texas wins again, for now.”
The decision comes as El Paso, Texas and other border cities face a daily influx of migrants that could increase if separate asylum restrictions enacted under President Donald Trump end next week as planned.
Thursday’s ruling could prove to be a temporary setback for the Biden administration, which can appeal.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it disagrees with the ruling and is considering next steps. He said it was within the government’s power to end the policy.
Under Trump, about 70,000 asylum seekers have been forced to wait in Mexico for US hearings under the policy introduced in January 2019. President Joe Biden – who said it “goes against everything we stand for as a nation of immigrants” – suspended the policy regarding his first day of office.
This triggered a long and winding legal and administrative process.
Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee in Amarillo, ordered the policy reinstated in 2021. The Biden administration complied with the order after agreeing to changes and additions requested by Mexico. But he did not apply the policy widely, and only a few thousand people were sent back to wait in Mexico.
The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in June that Biden has the ability to end what are technically known as migrant protection protocols. But it brought back a key question for Kacsmaryk: whether the administration’s action was “arbitrary and capricious” and therefore violated federal regulatory law.
In his 35-page ruling, the judge said it was likely a memo from October 2021 that was the administration’s latest effort to end the policy’s termination appeared to violate the law.
Among other things, the administration failed to consider the policy’s benefits, including reducing illegal immigration and “meritless asylum applications,” the ruling said.
Trump has made the policy a centerpiece of border enforcement, which critics have called inhumane because it has exposed migrants to extreme violence in Mexico and made access to lawyers much more difficult.
Kacsmaryk said the Biden administration’s memo mentioned the conditions migrants may face in Mexico, but not the hardships they face “when they make the perilous journey to the southern border” in the first place.
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