Supreme Court Declines to Step In as Trump-Texas Deal Closes Courtroom Deportation Pause
The high court on Tuesday rejected an emergency appeal from cities seeking to defend a Biden-era policy that let immigration judges halt removal proceedings.
By Nadia Singh ·
The Supreme Court decided Tuesday not to take up a case over whether immigration judges can pause deportation proceedings, leaving in place a lower-court block on a Biden administration policy. The move means the federal government and Texas can keep the practice off the table for now.
The dispute centers on administrative closure, a tool immigration judges use to put a case on hold. Texas and the Trump administration agreed to a court order that blocked the policy after Texas filed suit. Texas argued the practice expanded sharply under former President Joe Biden and let people stay in the country indefinitely.
The cities of Baltimore, Columbus, Ohio, and New Haven, Connecticut, along with the legal organization Centro Legal de la Raza, asked to join the case to defend the policy. A judge declined to let them intervene, and they then filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court. Represented by Democracy Forward, they argued that Texas and the Trump administration worked together to kill the rule through the courts rather than the normal rulemaking process.
The Justice Department urged the justices to turn the request down. It said the cities lacked standing to challenge the settlement and had not shown they would suffer immediate legal harm. The court did not explain its reasoning in the order.
