President Joe Biden’s administration is in the process of changing course on both the border wall and Trump era “remain in Mexico” policies. Per Reuters, the administration on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to postpone further legal filings in the two cases and to remove them from their oral argument calendar.
“The President has directed the Executive Branch to undertake an assessment of ‘the legality of the funding and contracting methods used to construct the wall,'” the administration wrote to the court Monday.
“It would therefore be appropriate for the court to hold further proceedings in this case in abeyance to allow for the completion of the process that the president has directed,” it added.
The Biden administration plans to discontinue wall construction and suspend the asylum program, potentially making the cases moot. SCOTUS was scheduled to hear arguments in the wall case on Feb. 22 and the asylum police case on March 1.
The court’s order essentially puts a hold on any litigation while giving the new administration time to review the legality of each policy and develop their own.
Border all case
The border wall was a central theme in Trump’s 2016 campaign. His supporters chanted “build the wall,” while Trump assured them Mexico would pay for the wall. The big issue over the wall is the legality of Trump’s decision to shift military funds already provided by lawmakers for other purposes., to pay for the project.
Trump said the wall was necessary to keep illegal immigrants out of the U.S. and stop drug smuggling. Democrats called it immoral, ineffective, and expensive.
The border wall case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Sierra Club, and others and challenges $2.5 billion in Department of Defense spending that was diverted to complete construction.
The asylum case
The asylum case concerns a policy the Department of Homeland Security acted on that forced almost 70,000 asylum-seekers to stay in Mexico while their applications were being processed. This policy spurred a legal challenge from the ACLU and immigration advocacy groups on behalf of immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
Under Biden, the Department of Homeland Security has stopped adding new people into the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols program. Many of the people in the program are children. They have faced violence and homelessness in Mexico while awaiting court dates. Human rights groups have documented cases of kidnappings, rapes, and assaults.
Biden plans on making sweeping changes to the country’s immigration policies, however, the administration hasn’t changed the status of previous asylum applicants or lifted pandemic-related restrictions at the border. One White House official said they would seek a policy “that enables them to pursue their cases and does not mean that they simply languish in Mexico.”
