The Supreme Court of the United States last night ordered the Government to keep in force, as a precaution, the health norm that since March 2020 provides for the hot return of immigrants at the border.
This is Title 42, special legislation that Donald Trump approved when the pandemic broke out to restrict entry from Mexico with the supposed aim of avoiding massive contagion through this route.
Joe Biden promised at the time a broad immigration reform that never came, and only last April announced the end of Title 42 as the health cause that motivated it or served as an excuse to approve it had declined. Meanwhile, the Trump law allowed the government to expel hundreds of thousands of new arrivals.
A federal judge stopped in May the annulment of the precept announced the previous month by the Government. Later, another judge ordered the lifting of the text for the end of the pandemic, and an appeals court upheld the decision: Title 42 should cease to apply on December 21.
But on December 19, at the behest of 19 Republican states, Supreme Court Chairman John Roberts suspended the annulment of the title and therefore decided to keep it in effect "until further notice" while he gave himself time to make a further decision. reasoned.
The Supreme Court adopted such a decision yesterday, in the sense of continuing to maintain the validity of the norm, although also provisionally. Well, it will be in February or March when the court hears the arguments of those republican states that want to maintain the immediate expulsions of migrants even though the health motivation is almost no longer standing. In the meantime, and perhaps until it decides on the merits of the appeals, Title 42 prevails.
The provisional ruling that the Supreme Court adopted last night is, from the outset, a painful blow to the thousands of migrants from all over Latin America who in recent weeks have gathered at the border, especially between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, with the expectation that Title 42 fell; when that happened, they could enter the United States without too much fear of being turned back on the spot, they believed. This even though the repeal of the precept would not have led to the approval of the entries of migrants without documents and without clear arguments for an asylum application; something that on the other hand is not easy to obtain.
The Supreme Court, with a clear conservative majority of 6 to 3, adopted its resolution last night, however, by 5 votes in favor and 4 against. And it is that the right-wing judge Neil Gorsuch joined the three progressives on the court through a hard vote against the decision of his usual companions.
"The current border crisis is not a COVID crisis. And the courts should not lend themselves to perpetuating administrative edicts designed for an (health) emergency just because elected officials have not developed a rule for a different emergency (immigration itself). Gorsuch wrote. And he added: "We are a court of law, not legislators of last resort."
