Supreme Court leaves Texas' deal with the Justice Department in place, ending immigration judges' power to pause some deportation cases

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to revive a 2024 federal rule that let immigration judges set aside some deportation cases, leaving in place an agreement between Texas and the U.S. Department of Justice that wiped the rule off the books.

The court's order was brief and unsigned, and it gave no reasons, SCOTUSblog reported.

The rule

The regulation, adopted by the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review, allowed what is called administrative closure. Under it, an immigration judge could put a deportation case on hold, for example so that a crime victim or witness could pursue asylum or other relief through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a separate agency.

How the case moved

Texas sued over the rule in June in federal court in Wichita Falls, where the case went to Chief U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor. The state argued that the immigration review office had no authority to adopt the rule and called it part of the previous administration's effort to undermine immigration law.

Within hours of the filing, Texas and the Justice Department jointly asked O'Connor to enter a final judgment for the state, and the department asked him to strike the rule and bar the agency from adopting a similar one. O'Connor granted both requests the same day.

In August, the cities of Baltimore; New Haven, Connecticut; and Columbus, Ohio, along with the legal aid group Centro Legal de la Raza, asked to join the case so they could defend the rule on appeal, since neither government planned to. O'Connor ruled they lacked standing to sue.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals then refused to put the agreement on hold while they appealed.

The arguments

The challengers told the justices the agreement was the result of "egregious collusion." Their lawyer, Joshua Salzman of Democracy Forward, warned that letting it stand would let any federal agency escape the law governing agency rules by refusing to defend a regulation it dislikes and immediately agreeing to a nationwide ruling against it.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the challengers were trying to turn a narrow fight over whether they could join the case into a broad attack on the judgment. Texas argued that pausing O'Connor's ruling would bring back a rule a court had found unlawful, renew harms the state said it suffered and unsettle a judgment both actual parties had accepted.

The court ruled four days after the last filings came in.

Sources

scotusblog.com