NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court has dealt another blow to the Biden administration’s attempt to undo former President Donald Trump’s policy requiring people seeking asylum in the United States to remain in Mexico while their asylum claims are processed.
In a Monday night ruling, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld a Texas-based federal judge’s decision maintaining Trump’s policy, formally known as the “Migrant Protection Protocols.”
President Joe Biden’s administration had appealed the August decision, but also began working with Mexico to reimplement the policy while the legal battle continued. Earlier this month, U.S. authorities sent the first two migrants back to Mexico under the reinstated policy.
Monday’s ruling by three 5th Circuit judges said the administration’s move to end the policy was arbitrary and violated a federal immigration statute requiring detention of those in the country illegally pending removal proceedings. If there is no capacity to detain them, Judge Andrew Oldham wrote for the panel, the statute allows the Department of Homeland Security to return them to “contiguous territories” while proceedings are pending.
Biden suspended the program on his first day in office in January and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas formally ended it in June. But the state of Missouri and Texas sued to reinstate it. Texas-based U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued an injunction keeping the policy in play, saying the administration failed to follow required procedures for ending it and did not have capacity to detain all asylum seekers.
Mayorkas issued a revised version of the policy Oct. 29, but Monday’s ruling said the revision “simply reaffirmed the Termination Decision that the States had been challenging all along.”
When he issued the Oct. 29 policy revision, Mayorkas said the “Remain in Mexico” policy likely contributed to a drop in illegal border crossings in 2019 but with “substantial and unjustifiable human costs” to asylum-seekers who were exposed to violence while waiting in Mexico.
The panel that issued Monday’s ruling included Oldham and Judge Kurt Engelhardt, both nominated to the court by Trump, and Judge Rhesa Barksdale, nominated by President George H.W. Bush.
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The DON’T have to “stay in Mexico”… They can stay in Guatemala or El Salvador, or whatever is their Country of Origin (just like all the other LAW ABIDING immigrants to the United States)!
AD since many come from ACROSS THE OCEAN To those south/central american nations, BEFORE THEY MARCH northward, WHY MUST WE be the only nation, that HAS TO LET THEM IN?!
That’s fine but biden and his rogue handlers have taken our border patrol down to almost nothing and that means no one will be stopping them from coming from who knows where and with what intentions. But at least the sick ones (according to the head clown) cannot infect us with anything they bring over the border. What this country needs is a vaccine for democratitis!
IMO the only ‘shot’ for that, is a lead shot, through their cranium.
That vaccine probably will not work so well either !