The recent back-and-forth in federal court rulings regarding our acceptance, rejection and treatment of refugees and other people seeking entry to this country is going forth, again, giving immigrants a better chance of making their pleas to live in the United States. Of course another judge still could issue a contrary ruling, as has happened before.
The Supreme Court already has ruled that the only place to resolve this issue is in Congress, not the courts. Let’s hope the changes to our lawmaking bodies open the door for real immigration reform to happen.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled on Nov. 15 that the government can’t use Title 42 of the U.S. Code of Laws to deport border crossers without detention or immigration hearings or other forms of due process. Title 42 gives the government the authority to remove people who threaten public health and safety by spreading communicable diseases. Then-president Donald Trump invoked the measure in 2020 as part of his immigration control policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention already has downgraded as a public threat.
President Biden announced an end to the policy earlier this year, and it prompted lawsuits from Texas and other states. A federal court in Louisiana invalidated Biden’s order on procedural grounds. The D.C. District Court, on which Sullivan sits, abridged that ruling in March, saying that migrants couldn’t be deported to countries where their safety was not assured.
The most recent ruling holds that Title 42 violates the Administrative Procedures Act and “does not rationally serve its stated purpose in view of the alternatives.”
The measure always was misused; it was invoked not in the name of public safety but to reduce the numbers of people seeking legal entry into this country.
The Supreme Court will address immigration next week, but it has been hesitant to do so, and with good reason. The court has agreed to hear arguments to changes Biden made to another Trump policy. The former president had issued an order giving Border Patrol agents prosecutorial discretion to deport migrants immediately. Biden changed the parameters for that discretion, prompting the flood of lawsuits that generally all changes to Trump’s actions provoke.
However, the court previously has made it clear that the place for immigration reform is in the halls of Congress, not the courts. And the results of the midterm elections could enable at least some such reforms.
Resistance to any effort to improve immigration policy has come largely from Republican Party lawmakers. The current House has passed several reform bills that have been stymied in the Senate. Although their majority is slim, Senate Democrats should be brave and bold, and pass some of the measures that have cleared the House.
Our immigration policies are so bad because no action has been taken for decades. As time passes, however, the problems become larger and more complicated. It’s time to end the court battles and enact legislation that fixes our immigration system once and for all.
