Greetings!
Hope 2022 has found you and your loved ones healthy and happy. Here at Justice Action Center, we’ve continued to monitor all efforts that states and others have made to counter the immigrant-inclusive agenda we’re fighting for.
In addition, we’re working with our partners at Haitian Bridge Alliance and Innovation Law Lab to hold the Biden administration to account for its reprehensible actions in Del Rio, Texas, last September, when they kept thousands of Haitian asylum seekers in deplorable conditions and expelled many of them back to the dangerous conditions these asylum seekers fled. You can read news coverage here of the lawsuit HBA v. Biden, and if you’re so inclined, please feel free to use this toolkit to speak out and demand that Biden bring our plaintiffs and people like them back to receive their fair shot at a safe and dignified life here in the United States.
Here’s what we’ve seen in the courts:
Biden raises the stakes.
The Biden administration formally asked the Supreme Court to review Texas v. Biden, the case that brought Biden’s attempts to amend the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” (also known as MPP or RMX) policy to a halt, and pressured them to stand the RMX program back up. While the Biden administration tried to use a more robust memo to rescind the policy, the Fifth Circuit rejected their efforts.
This is the first major immigration case the Biden administration has asked the Supreme Court to review. The Court will consider whether to take the case in a month, and if it does, the case could be heard later this spring.
All of us, regardless of whether we are interested in asylum issues, should pay close attention to this case: It will be a test of how far red states and their cherry-picked extremist courts can go to thwart an administration’s attempt to enact its own agenda.
States continue attacks.
Several of the long-simmering courtroom fights will go to court over the next few weeks. Notably, the Texas lawsuit over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) priorities is scheduled to go to a bench trial in the district court on Feb. 1.
Anti-immigrant actors aren’t the only ones bringing their fight to the courts: We’ll be cheering on our colleagues at ACLU, Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, RAICES, and Oxfam as they challenge Title 42 in court tomorrow. Learn more about their lawsuit here.
Thanks, as always, for reading. Stay tuned for the launch of our Litigation Tracker micro site next month! You’ll be able to search immigration litigation by topic, location, and more—and access related news coverage, movement tools, and court filings.
Sincerely,
--kt
