WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
  • The Supreme Court declined to restore a Biden administration rule allowing immigration judges to suspend certain deportation proceedings.
  • The brief unsigned order listed no noted dissents and left the agreement between Texas and the Justice Department intact.
  • A House Judiciary Committee report found more than 700,000 migrant cases were dismissed, terminated, or administratively closed under Biden.
  • The discarded regulation allowed administrative closure for certain proceedings, including cases involving crime victims and asylum seekers.

The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a significant immigration victory Tuesday, declining to restore a Biden administration rule that allowed immigration judges to suspend thousands of deportation cases. The brief unsigned order listed no noted dissents.

The policy permitted deportation cases to be vacated, leaving illegal aliens in the United States without real legal status. Its demise blocks immigration judges from using that procedure to shelve covered cases.

At the center of the dispute was a regulation providing what is called “administrative closure,” adopted in 2024 by the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. The regulation allowed immigration judges to set aside certain deportation proceedings.

Those proceedings could include cases involving crime victims or people seeking asylum, according to SCOTUSblog. The process effectively paused cases rather than moving them through the deportation system.

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Texas sued the federal government over the regulation in June. The state described the administrative closure rule as “one part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s campaign to undermine our immigration laws.”

Rather than defend the Biden administration regulation, the Justice Department asked the court to enter a final judgment for Texas. That outcome would throw out the regulation and bar the Executive Office for Immigration Review from adopting similar rules in the future.

The court granted those requests. That prompted an effort by three cities with large migrant populations, along with a migrant legal services organization, to step into the legal fight and defend the regulation.

The cities were Baltimore, Maryland, New Haven, Connecticut, and Columbus, Ohio. Centro Legal de la Raza also joined the emergency petition filed in August.

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A judge denied their request, finding that they lacked the legal right to sue. The petitioners then took their case to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

The appeals court rejected their request to block the agreement between Texas and the Justice Department. The petitioners turned to the Supreme Court on October 9, alleging that the agreement was the product of “egregious collusion.”

Their attorney warned the high court about the consequences of allowing the judgment to stand. The attorney argued, “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.”

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The Supreme Court nevertheless declined to revive the regulation. With no noted dissents, the unsigned order left the agreement between Texas and the Justice Department in place.

The scale of administrative closures and related case actions under the Biden administration had already drawn scrutiny from the House Judiciary Committee. In October 2024, the committee released a report finding that more than 700,000 migrant cases had been dismissed, terminated, or administratively closed.

The report said those actions were “allowing those aliens to stay in the country indefinitely without facing immigration consequences.” Of the more than 700,000 cases, 71,465 had been administratively closed through July 2023.

The committee also said, “The pace of case dismissals, terminations, and closures increased every year under the Biden-Harris Administration.” It reported that 5,214 cases were administratively closed from January 20, 2021, through the end of fiscal year 2021.

That figure rose to 35,775 cases in fiscal year 2022. Another 30,476 cases were administratively closed during just the first 10 months of fiscal year 2023, according to the committee.

The report separately examined asylum proceedings and compared the Biden and Trump administrations. It stated, “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 Supreme Court’s order leaves the Biden administration regulation discarded and prevents the immigration review office from adopting similar rules in the future. For the Trump administration and Texas, the ruling preserves their agreement and closes off an avenue that had placed thousands of deportation proceedings on the shelf.

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