By Ariane de Vogue | CNN
The Supreme Court says the controversial Trump administration “Remain in Mexico” asylum policy can stay in effect while legal challenges play out.The court’s order is a victory for the administration, which warned there would be a “rush to the border” if the policy that has been in effect for a year was blocked by the courts. It’s a devastating loss for immigrant rights groups who say asylum seekers sent back to Mexico are living in dangerous conditions.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor would have denied the government’s application, the court said.
The policy, officially known as Migrant Protection Protocols, mandates that non-Mexican asylum return to Mexico as they await hearings in the United States. It has resulted in the creation of makeshift camps where hundreds of migrants have waited for weeks, if not months, in squalid and unsafe conditions. In some cases, migrant families have opted to send children across the US-Mexico border alone.
Last month the Ninth Circuit struck down the trump administration’s controversial MPP, or Migrant Protection Protocol program, which required asylum seekers detained at the southern border to await their court hearings in Mexico rather than inside the United States. The rationale for this decision being that for non-Mexican citizens, being forced to await their process in Mexico subjected them to great risk of harm such as extortion and violence.
The Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration in upholding its request for an emergency stay of the decision while the legal process plays out, citing concerns of chaos and disruption at the border if the Migrant Protection Protoco program were to be disbanded. The decision is the latest example of the SCOTUS sticking to ideological positions and siding with the Administration in anti-immigrant policy. ~ Darius Amiri, Esq.
