WASHINGTON: The US government's two-year-old approach of conjuring Coronavirus safety measures to dismiss a huge number of travelers at the Mexican line will stay set up for the time being, the High Court controlled Tuesday.
As thousands waited at the southern border in anticipation of the policy's imminent end, the decision to uphold the controversial Title 42 rule delayed President Joe Biden's impending political crisis.
But the high court, which is dominated by conservatives, accepted a petition from 19 states that warned of a surge in migrants if the policy that was implemented in March 2020 by former president Donald Trump was lifted as ordered by a lower court.
The Supreme Court stated that it would hear the case in February and that Title 42, which permits the swift expulsion of individuals who may qualify for asylum, would remain in place pending its decision.
In its 5-4 decision, the court stated, "The states contend that they face an immigration crisis at the border and policymakers have failed to agree on adequate measures to address it."
"The states suggest that an order from this Court directing the federal government to continue its Covid-era Title 42 policies as long as possible is the only means left to mitigate the crisis," reads the order.
The decision could give the Biden organization, which had yielded that Title 42 was off-base and ready for a flood of refuge looking for transients, until May or June before a ultimate conclusion.
Biden told reporters Tuesday night as he left the White House for vacation that ending Title 42 was "overdue," but that the administration would follow the court's decision until a final decision is made, likely in June.
Biden stated, "We have to enforce it in the meantime."
Karine Jean-Pierre, a spokesperson for the White House, stated earlier in the day that the administration would prepare for the subsequent hearing.
In a statement, Jean-Pierre said, "We are advancing our preparations to manage the border in a secure, orderly, and humane way when Title 42 eventually lifts."
"Title 42 should not be extended indefinitely because it is a public health measure, not an immigration enforcement measure."
She stated, "We need Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform to truly fix our broken immigration system."
Louisiana Representative Bill Cassidy said that eliminating Title 42 "would have aggravated our boundary, and the White House appeared to allow that to occur."
"Delighted to see the High Court step in to safeguard it, yet we really want a super durable arrangement," he said on Twitter.
Although the government had increased border fencing and staffing in preparation for Title 42's expiration, it was unclear how it would have stopped the anticipated increase.
In the year up to November, approximately 2.5 million people attempted to cross the southern US border.
While a long time back a large portion of the transients were from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, presently the greater part come from a lot further away - - from Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, Eastern Europe and Asia.
Biden and his Democratic Party face an increasing political challenge from ballooning migrant numbers at the border, which Republicans have repeatedly attempted to portray as accommodating to illegal immigration.
Title 42 has been called "inhumane" by critics.
In a statement, senior attorney Karla Marisol Vargas of the Texas Civil Rights Project stated, "Title 42 has not only failed but caused irreparable harm on a massive scale as a Covid control strategy, a humanitarian policy, and a border policy."
"Individuals have kept on making the long and perilous excursion to the line, on the grounds that for some Dark, Native, and Earthy colored networks, the US remains their last, most obvious opportunity at endurance," she said.
Refugees International, which is based in Washington, said that the Supreme Court "will be responsible for what the lower court called 'irreparable harm' that befalls asylum seekers expelled under Title 42." This was a similar criticism of the decision.
The decision made by the Supreme Court was largely ideologically divided and prompted new inquiries regarding the conservative majority's readiness to intervene in contentious political issues.
They accepted a petition from 19 conservative states governed by Republicans, none of whom were even a party to the initial Title 42 lawsuit.
The majority of the court's decision was made up of five conservatives, and conservative Neil Gorsuch joined the three progressive justices in opposing the extension of Title 42.
In his dissension, Gorsuch asserts that he comprehends the border states' concerns regarding an increase in migrants.
"The current border crisis is not a Covid crisis," he wrote, however. Additionally, courts should not be in the business of enforcing administrative edicts created for a single emergency due to elected officials' failure to address a different emergency."