Supreme Court upholds Biden v. Texas and Louisiana in lawsuit over deportation policy

The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled Friday in favor of the Biden Administration and its immigration policy. SCOTUS members voted down the Texas-led lawsuit against DHS border measures that reduced the number of deportations at the southern border.

The members of the highest court voted eight to one in this case. Only Judge Samuel Alito ruled in favor of the plaintiff. "In short, the states have brought an extraordinarily unusual lawsuit. They want a federal court to order the Executive Branch to change its detention policy in order to make more arrests. Traditionally, federal courts have not entertained such suits; in fact, the states cite no precedent for such a suit," Judge Brett Kavanaugh noted in the ruling.

Specifically, the southern states denounced a series of law enforcement guidelines by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Mayorkas' department intended to impose a 30-day moratorium on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportations. At the same time, border detentions were fewer and subject to a series of conditions.

Mayorkas defended these guidelines as the most efficient way to make use of the then-limited resources available to federal agencies with a presence on the southern border. Texas argued that Mayorkas' actions were a severe disruption to the control at the border and an incentive to chaos. As a result of these DHS measures, deportations plummeted during FY2022.

Although SCOTUS did not give the green light to the state's lawsuit against the federal government, a federal district judge in Texas blocked the DHS guidelines for border control. Judge Drew Tipton ruled that Texas had the grounds to bring the case because it could show that the state was harmed when illegal aliens who the federal government should have detained came to Texas and committed crimes there.