SCOTUS says Trump admin can prevent immigration judges from giving amnesty by closing deportation cases without trial

At the center of the case was the regulation that provides “administrative closure,” which was adopted by the DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review Executive Office for Immigration Review in 2024. The regulation allows immigration judges to shelve some deportation proceedings, such as for crime victims or those seeking asylum, per SCOTUSblog.

Texas sued the federal government over the regulation in June, saying that the administrative closure rule was “one part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s campaign to undermine our immigration laws.” Instead of defending the Biden-era regulation, the DOJ asked the court to enter a final judgment for the state that would see the regulation thrown out and an order issued that the EOIR could not adopt similar rules in the future. The requests were granted.

Three cities with large migrant populations filed an emergency petition in August. These were Baltimore, Maryland; New Haven, Connecticut; and Columbus, Ohio, as well as the migrant legal services group Centro Legal de la Raza. They were seeking to defend the Biden-era regulation, however, the judge denied their request, saying that they lacked the legal right to sue.

The petitioners went to the US Circuit of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which rejected their request to block the agreement between Texas and the DOJ. They went to the Supreme Court on October 9, claiming that the agreement between Texas and the DOJ was the product of “egregious collusion.”

The attorney representing the petitioners argued to the high court, “If a judgment procured through such open collusion is allowed to remain in effect, any agency can avoid the strictures of the” federal law governing administrative agencies “by advertising its unwillingness to defend a disfavored regulation and by immediately acquiescing to nationwide relief.”

In October of 2024, the House Judiciary Committee released a report finding that under the Biden administration, over 700,000 migrant cases were dismissed, terminated, or administratively closed, “allowing those aliens to stay in the country indefinitely without facing immigration consequences.” Of those 700,000, there were 71,465 cases that were administratively closed through July 2023.

The committee noted that “The pace of case dismissals, terminations, and closures increased every year under the Biden-Harris Administration,” with 5,214 cases being administratively closed between January 20, 2021 to the end of fiscal year 2021, which grew to 35,775 cases in fiscal year 2022 and 30,476 through just the first 10 months of fiscal year 2023.

“For asylum cases, immigration judges administratively closed 58,463 cases from fiscal year 2021 through the third quarter of fiscal year 2024, compared to only 13,590 asylum cases administratively closed under the Trump Administration, including merely 132 in fiscal year 2019 and 481 in fiscal year 2020,” the report stated.