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On Wednesday, the Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to help it jettison former President Donald Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) policy, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy.
The Biden administration asked whether the Department of Homeland Security had to continue implementing MPP and whether “the court of appeals erred by concluding that the Secretary’s new decision terminating MPP had no legal effect.”
Last June, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memo terminating MPP. But then a district court vacated that decision, entering a permanent injunction requiring DHS to reinstate and maintain MPP unless Congress “funded sufficient detention capacity for DHS to detain all noncitizens subject to mandatory detention under Section 1225 and until the agency adequately explained a future termination,” the Biden administration wrote.
Also in June, it was reported that the Biden administration would permit at least 10,000 asylum seekers whose previous claims were denied or dismissed to register to enter the United States.
The six conservative justices of the Court agreed with Kacsmaryk’s decision, writing:
The application for a stay presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied. The applicants have failed to show a likelihood of success on the claim that the memorandum rescinding the Migrant Protection Protocols was not arbitrary and capricious. … Our order denying the Government’s request for a stay of the District Court injunction should not be read as affecting the construction of that injunction by the Court of Appeals.
On October 29, 2021, Mayorkas terminated MPP, but a federal appeals court blocked the decision. In December, Biden was ordered by the court to restart the program.