OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The border with the United States and Mexico is a disaster it does not appear that anything Joe Biden has done to fix it has worked.
But it is possible that what he is getting set to do could be part of the solution, and that is reimplementing Donald Trump’s Remain In Mexico policy.
The Biden administration is not doing it because it wants to, but because a court has demanded that it has to, CNN reported.
The Biden administration is preparing to revive in mid-November a Trump-era border policy that forces migrants to stay in Mexico until their US immigration court date, according to administration officials, putting it on track to implement another controversial policy at the US southern border.
The timeline, administration officials cautioned, is contingent on Mexico and whether it agrees to accept those enrolled in the program.
The policy, informally known as “remain in Mexico,” was suspended at the beginning of President Joe Biden’s term and formally terminated months later. But in August, a federal judge in Texas said that the Biden administration had violated the Administrative Procedure Act — which requires that agencies take certain procedural steps when implementing policy — in how it went about unwinding the program and ordered its revival.
The Supreme Court later declined the Biden administration’s request that it put on hold the lower court order, issuing a major blow to the administration as it sought to distance itself from Trump-era immigration policies.
“Mexico is a sovereign nation that must make an independent decision to accept the return of individuals without status in Mexico as part of any reimplementation of MPP,” the Department Of Homeland Security said. “Discussions with the Government of Mexico concerning when and how MPP will be reimplemented are ongoing.”
In March Biden touted his administration stopping the policy.
“Rolling back the policies of ‘Remain in Mexico,’ sitting on the edge of the Rio Grande in a muddy circumstance with not enough to eat and — I make no apologies for that,” he said. “I make no apologies for ending programs that did not exist before Trump became President, that have an incredibly negative impact on the law, international law, as well as on human dignity.”
But the states of Texas and Missouri started a lawsuit against the administration, arguing that the abrupt ending of the program could make the border crisis worse.
“The number of migrants taken into custody along the Mexico border this year is at the highest level in at least two decades,” The Washington Post said.
The U.S. Supreme Court in August delivered a stinging defeat to Joe Biden.
By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration must reinstate Donald Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols policy, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy.
As The Texas Tribune reported:
The Biden administration made an emergency request that the Supreme Court justices act, saying Kacsmaryk “fundamentally misunderstood” federal immigration law and improperly meddled in immigration and foreign policy decisions left to the executive branch. … A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit had largely sided with Kacsmaryk and had refused the government’s request to stay his ruling while considering the government’s appeal.
All six conservative justices agreed with the lower court’s ruling against the Biden administration:
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.
